I am sometimes quite impatient. Right now, I have negative patience. I can feel it in my head. Like there's a missing layer and two facets of my brain are rubbing against each other. I'm ready to throw my computer mouse. Slam it down. Absolutely demolish it. My shoulders are so tight--contorted, gnarled, a tree growing through a dilapidated porch and around the roof.

So I called O. I don't know why. It seemed like the thing to do. But he was running late, and ironically, had not patience for me. I'm throwing all my insecurities at him lately. All his frustrations are my fault. I can't read his sarcasm. I assume that everything I scold myself for is blatantly visible and he's poking everything I've been picking. But apparently not. I hate that I think he's judging me. If he is, that sucks. If he isn't, I'm totally crazy. I tend to think he's not, but I need to figure out a way to make myself realize that he's not annoyed at the pile of clean clothes between my closet and the bed. I wish he would be annoyed, though. Then I wouldn't feel so bad about being annoyed at the pile of clean? clothes on his dresser. I just want to get the apartment clean. Its messiness is tiring. I'm trying, but I have no discipline and no training in the efficient running of a household. It takes me an hour to do dishes. And I can't chop for shit. I have all these recipes that say 10 minutes prep. But it takes me twenty to chop everything. I'm going to take a cutting class at the local cooking school in April. goddammit! I am. I pile when I clean. I have to create steps. I can't just randomly pick stuff up. No. I have to get a hamper to carry all the shoes from the living room to the bedroom. But the hamper is full of clothes, so I have to sort the clothes and put them away. But somewhere in there I decide the kitchen table really needs to be cleared, so I throw all of my small things that are lying around into the hamper, which means the shoes are still all over the living room and now I need to sort my shit out of the hamper again. Why can't I just put things away as I come across them. Today is kick the shit out of myself day. Edward Norton, much? I hate that movie. I'm being totally erratic, now, but I feel a million times better and am ready for the rest of my day. I think the two layers of my brain have even stopped rubbing together.

The less I do, the less I want to do. If I start working, I can keep going. For a while. Then pffft. No motivation.

Deli

I'm afraid the boredom of the last few weeks at work has permeated my brain. I have a few things to do today. Not enough to fill it, but I'm going about it slowly enough to hopefully fill my time. I'm fine tweaking all the little details I'd otherwise ignore (and could easily afford to ignore if I didn't have the time).
Why does it seem to take me 2 hours to prepare dinner? Even when it's a quick dinner. I need to start repeating meals. I think it's a first run thing. If I make the meal again, I'll know where I can overlap. Like chop the vegetables while water comes to a boil. Start cooking the sauce while the pasta cooks. If I could have magical powers with food, that'd be awesome. I could just snap and a perfectly balanced meal would appear. My stomach hurts. I think it's because I was rushed this morning and only had time for a granola bar. Blarg.
Boss and old girl are upstairs in his office smoking and chatting. I'm left out. I'm sure it's not all that interesting. and I'm sure I'd have nothing to add.
A couple of days ago, a couple of tool bags came in. They've been in before. He talks like he knows everything, when in fact he does not. He just chooses the most complex ways of doing simple things. For instance, he makes catalogs one page at a time in Photoshop, instead of InDesign. Bitmapped text much? Anyhow, I made a very good suggestion about one detail of their project and lady was so against it. I suggested they nudge a few things on the inside of a package so there wouldn't be folds in the middle of any text. She said it didn't matter. It wasn't visible on the outside of the packaging. After it's sold, she doesn't care. Sickening. And I hate to admit I was hurt when she didn't think my idea was killer. I'm still confused as to why she didn't want to do it. It'd be super easy. A few guide marks and nudges. Oh well.
I just loaded six boxes of donation cards into the back of an SUV as the driver talked on his cell phone. Rude, rude, rude. Not so much the not helping me part, but the not helping me because he was on his phone part. That pretty much brings me up to present.

I tend to be a pessimistic daydreamer. Lately, I've been daydreaming about the work dynamic when old girl starts back. I'm comfortable here. Honkered down even. I keep creating scenes where she's bossing me around or plotting to have me fired. In a fair world, if one of us had to leave one day, it should be her, right? She left. I wasn't hired under the impression that my job was at risk of her return. I just hope her presence is the only thing to change. She'll have her own work area, very separated from mine, so I maybe I won't even have to know she's here. But then my doubts strengthen. What if my boss, who's very keen on her return, favors her and makes me the neglected orphaned step-child he's stuck with? What if she renames all my files "Untitled-1," "Untitled-2" "Untitled 3" and so on to the end of my files?* Why would she do that you ask? Because I can think of it. She could take the same exact lunch time as I do so I have to watch Passions instead of What Not to Wear. I mean, apocalyptic much? She and my boss could form a little whisper huddle and discuss hugely vital goings-on, while not doing anything about it and assuming I know. And then when customers wonder where their stuff is, they'll be directed to me, but I'll be lost and yelled at.

In reality, I'm not too shook up over her return. I see it as neither positive nor negative. But neither positive and neither negative do not wrangle my worries.

*Random side note: In an effort to illustrate how catastrophic such a re-titling would be, I thought I'd check the info on my external and see how many files are there. It didn't tell me, but now I really want to know. There are 337 folders, very few of which don't contain sub-folders. So I'd guess we have at least 500,000 files. Catastrophic.

Target uses "Everybody's a Star" by the Kinks in their new commercial promoting the launch of Converse in their stores. It's off one of those albums I grew up on. "Soap Opera," was a concept album about a rock star trading places with a normal man, Norman. I'm excited to hear the song, but also annoyed because of that whole sell-out stigma of having a song in a commercial.

The girl I took over for is back. In September, she moved to the coast to be with her boyfriend. Well, they broke up, and she's back, and my boss offered her a job. Not her old job, which is to say MY JOB!, but a new position in "Sales and Marketing." From what the fellas in the back tell me, that means she'll sit and do as much of nothing as she can. I worked with her for a month before she moved and she seemed to work, but I'm thinking it was just to show me how things work. I don't think I need to worry about my job, but I will be saving a lot more for a while. And I'll feel less guilty when I leave for grad school.

Crazy Cat Lady

Three stories. The first two feed the third.

1.) Today, I bought Oscar a $.99 Tyrannosaurus Rex from Target. He named it Renee (after DeCartes) but then decided it was a girl. So, it's a girl with a girl's name, but after a boy. Anyway, he keeps randomly roaring at me and making it climb on me. It's quite adorable really.

2.) I quote myself from an email to a friend:

Euler is a kitty garbage disposal. He will eat anything.
I told you about the felt. Well, he ate the plastic ring
from a milk jug. He eats string, toilet paper, cotton balls,
carpet, plastic bags. When he eats his food, he literally
makes scarfing noises. I don't think he chews. When I get
home from work, I buy their love with with Catmilk.
Wedgie won't drink it unless it's on their carpet tower.
And I have to look away. Euler is such a lover bunny though.
He slept on my head last night, and he totally hugs my
shoulder when I pick him up.

3.) Tonight, I made broccoli soup from a recipe from "Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares," a show on BBC America in which a great chef goes into failing restaurants and tries to diagnose and cure the problem. He literally threw cooked broccoli and some of it's cooked in water into a food processor with some salt. It's tasty. Euler thinks so too. He and Wedgie were being particularly feed me feed me tonight, so I gave them some more food. Inspired by his scarfing noises, I tried him on the broccoli soup. He LOVED it. Wedgie wouldn't touch it. Renee (as played by Oscar), despite being a carnivore, insisted on trying it too. She didn't like it, so I let Euler lick it off her. My cat made out with a plastic dinosaur covered in broccoli soup.