And My Clothing Continues to Torment Me

And no this isn't about the fact that a coworker misread my t-shirt and my new name is Stinky.

I have learned to never take clothing out of context... or would it be "used"? Whatever it is it was a bad fashion choice this morning. You would have thought that the memory of all my past mockage of people wearing sun visors and tennis wrist bands in movie theaters and malls would have come to my rescue, but noooooooo.

For the ill-fated softball games I bought a longsleeve Under Armour shirt. For those who have never heard of this stuff, it helps keep you cool when you're working out/in the heat for a while, which is a must for me considering this area has 102 degree summer days and very little cloud cover and I have a bizarre sun allergy that turns me into a drooling mass of delerious pain.

This morning I thought, "Hey, it's a $40 shirt and it certainly isn't going to be seeing any physical exertion until my knee heals up," and decided to trade my usual under-tee long sleevey shirt for this uber-science-like, so-far-beyond-cotton masterpiece of engineering.

While it is a lifesaver when out and about in the cruel, cruel sun, it is not, I repeat NOT prudent office attire. I'm freekin' freezing and I can no longer feel my fingers.

Shirt Choice Proves Ironic

Or maybe purely co-inky-dink-y. It's too early for Alanis Morisette bouts of theological discussion.

This has been the first full week back at work after my Softball Faux Paux/Knee Popping Extravaganza, and it’s been tiring and severely, mind-numbing, muscle-spasming painful. But it was my own stupid, wanna-be normal fault, so I take my punishment with as little whining and bitching as possible. For those of you who know me, you'll nod when I say that at the least this is annoying, at the most it’s a great way to learn new cuss words and frighten small children. (Nod, damn you!)

So TGI-Frickin’-F everybody! It’s the unofficial silly t-shirt day.

The week before last’s tee, which proved to be bizarrely prophetic, consisted of:

1. A cutesy wootsey cartoon bunny head - A tribute to Conner the Wonder Chunk? A love of strategically placed ears? The caricaturish manifestation of my desire to be light and fluffy and accepted wherever geeks are bold perhaps?


2. Pink crossbones – Doomie doom doom, apparently; no conundrum there.


3. Oh and whatever animal t-shirt comes from, of course

This morning, through a haze of night-time pain killer remnants and a severe case of eye-crunchies, I opted for an old favorite. Perfectly worn in, with that comfy familiarity slack-off clothes tend to harbor, I left the house secure in the knowledge that tomorrow I could sleep in and cope with 5 days of pent up pain and frustration.

It wasn’t until I was already hobbling in the general direction of my office that the true significance of this particular choice hit me. My life is a series of obscure metaphors and bizarre happenstance, and just like the mediocre fun my witty little shirt advertises, I too travel very slowly down stairs.


I’m also fun for girls and boys, but that’s an entirely different post.

Lessons Learned

If I ever get it in my screwed up head to become a normal, social adult I want you to poke me in the eye so I can begin my new life as the pirate I know I've always been meant to be. The eye patch will go real nice-like with my wooden leg and crutch. Ok, so it's not a wooden leg, per se; but I can't move it and I'm prety sure there are termites.

First game of the season, first hit of the season (and it was a great one, by the way) and first mind-numbingly painful cockup. I decided against buying the oh so fashionable kleats thinking the crappy place we practice must be the same as the nicer place where the games are. I ran, slid, bopped around trying to regain my balance without landing on my bad knee tearing 3" of skin off my good knee in the process, made a spectacular popping noise and ended up sprawled on the ground feeling really shitty for cussing in front of coworkers' children.

I sprained my knee and added a slight tear where the previous damage was. It could have been a helluva lot worse, so I'm slightly okay with it. Oddly enough, the most pain comes from the skinned knee (it's really more of a scalping of the knee, there's that much gone) and hobbling about on crutches in a hoppy sort of way that makes the crunchy bits on the scrape crinkle and crack and hurt like a mofo.

Weasels! I can't think of a title....

Yesterday I was faced with an interesting question. It flitted about in the back of my mind as I went about my daily activities. It popped up like an exasperating round of Whack-a-Mole for the better part of an afternoon, bouncing about Arsenic Treatment Vessels in glorious 3D and slithering in and around what seemed like miles and miles of virtually virtual piping.

“If she was a real mother and not some fairy tale mock up of an evil pain-in-the-world’s-collective-patootey (I still love, love, LOVE that word!), how much would I be happily willing to spend on a birthday pressie?”

I thought and thought and thought and took a break for a cookie and thought some more. It wasn’t until I was well on my way home that I settled on a nice round number, the kind of number that makes even the humblest of giftees utter a resounding “Holy Shite!”

Finally equipped with a value but before I could begin the narrowing down of wonderful shiny things that could be purchased with just such a fabulous and oh, so generous number, the reality of it all hit me. I remembered (as if 8 years of witnessing it all first hand could be easily set aside) that she wasn’t some lovely, caring Mom or even a halfway decent Mother. I balk at even referring to someone who would spend a lifetime belittling and tearing to shreds every single person around her (even tho her own sad excuse for an existence is pathetic at best, parasitic at worst) as “That Thing that had you Removed.”

So faced with the unsettling fact that the old adage of the evil mother of the groom can be a reverberating, disturbingly, and empathically True, I took that deliciously zoftig number and found an enormously more therapeutic and much more fulfilling use for it – I bought myself some shoes and a pair of Happy Bunny socks that say “It’s not my fault you’re icky.”… in Blue.

Now to summon my squirrel army!

My Life as Defined by "The Man"

Wow, never thought I'd get to use that phrase...ever.

So after years of snickering and great mockage of locals who ever thought a ruling body incapable of keeping its own scarred, mangled corpse out of harm's way could/would take the time to smack anyone else down/keep anyone else out, my drive-time epiphany was quite the shocker.

For years I've struggled in vain to find some metaphor for my existence (everyone should have one; I highly recommend them for those days when you just don't know why you want to beat nuns with sacks of penguins while humming the theme song to Dobie Gillis) but aside from the occasional "Life Sucks Monkeys" I've come up short time and time again.

Then on my student-free commute (who'da thunk all those idiots driving like jackasses were the future leaders of our nation?) on a dreary, time-skewed Monday it hit me:

Daylight Savings Time is the metaphor for my life. The perfect illustration of the monotonous cycle of Me.

Always a whiz at the Falling Back.

Completely inept at the Springing Forward.

Well maybe not completely, but it certainly wouldn’t count as a Spring. I can Stumble and I can certainly Flail, but ‘to spring’ is a verb gone AWOL.

The Tail of the Tech-Monkey and the Existential Conundrum

Or
To Flee or not to Flee…

This may or may not be the most opportune time to post something like this, but the last few days have really got me pondering. And to Ponder is to Mull, and to Mull is to ruin a perfectly good dose of Joyful-Expectation that’s been a long time comin’.

How much can one thing own another?

I’m not talking about relationships based on esoteric stuff like warm and fuzzy feelings or various planes of disdain. In a professional capacity that does not involve the selling of one’s immediate future to a governing entity, how much of one’s existence can be detained by another? And how can wanting to better oneself be such a taboo?

I have an opportunity to not only move slightly up and over from the position I tentatively hold now, but to do something that the possibility of accomplishing on this current path has a measly shelf life of 2 or 3 years tops – return to school to get a real degree in something I actually love doing. I know myself and my life well enough to be realistic; if I wait much longer, I won’t.

My new job is going to be beyond this everyday tech-biscuit business, but I’m looking forward to it; and the ability to expect the best used to be something that this life had all but broken in me. If I don’t keep learning and growing, I get Bored and when I get bored I get Complacent and Complacency leads to Swelled Head which causes me to tilt off center which makes children stare and point and… It just leads to no good, I tell you, no good a’tall.

So I opted for the one that will give me the things I require more than money. Don’t get me wrong, money is right there on the list beneath “Happiness” and “Cranial Stimulation,” but it’s not the end-all-be-all of my contentment. It’s a nice perk that I hope gets even perkier as time goes on.

Back to the original question –

I can understand the other side’s point of view; it makes sense to think that effort and privilege bestowed on another should be rewarded with respect and loyalty. But at what point does Loyalty become Obligation? And when Opportunity to excel is denied, doesn’t Obligation bleed out into Resentment? I would like to think I’m bigger than that, better than the baser human state of selfish resentment and mounting odium, but I can’t say for sure that if I’d stayed, if I’d turned down an opportunity the likes of which would either never be offered again or I would be too smug/afraid/bitter to consider accepting in the future, that self-destructive little germ would not have started burrowing its way into the darkest parts of me, festering and scheming.

So, how much of me is beholden and for how bloody long?