complaining

I’m trying out a new little feature today - a little bulleted entry that’s kind of like a to-”done” list of things that affected my day. Let me know how it goes. Is it too boring, indulgent, or both? Let’s hope for both!

• I finally walked up to Guy Talking On His Cell Phone At The Gym. I walked up to him and I didn’t say, “Please don’t talk on your cell phone,” or “Your constant cell phone usage ruins my cardio workouts at least three days a week,” or, “The gym is for working your body, not your mouth.” But, no, I walked up to him, looked him in the eyes, and simply said, “CELL PHONE” and walked away. He then made a couple of lame comments about me to his friend but I take comfort in the fact that he didn’t have the nuts to walk up to me and say anything to my face. He’s in the running for a Douchebag of the Year Award, no question (that’s going to be another new blog feature, maybe).

• I got in separate fights with both of my parents over politics today. I don’t like this. We’re all stubborn, and, although my parents raised me with Southern values, I was raised, geographically, in Boston. You know what that means. I know they’re wiser than me and in a way know better, but I also know that I truly feel and know what I feel and know. Mostly, I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about these issues with my parents and that I should have restrained myself. Mostly, it’s taking every inch of my will (will comes in inches, right?) not to have BROOD officially endorse Barack Obama in the coming days. We’ll see how this pans out - I also don’t want to bring politics to my blog just like I don’t want to talk with my parents about politics. Kind of.

• Both of the above points obviously stem from how badly my job has been going since the big merge on January first. I no longer have time to rest or think or even take lunch (or write regular blog updates! Or write in general!) during the day, and the whole time I’m bitter about the fact that I’m working with twice the book list, twice the bosses, and the same exact pay. I need something. I shouldn’t be crying every day when I get home from work and I shouldn’t be lashing out at my parents or even at Guy Talking On His Cell Phone At The Gym, even though I’m somewhat sure he should be shot to keep his chatty genes from being passed on. I just feel very enraged these days. Anyone have New York City job leads? I’ll try anything that involves keeping most my clothes on. I’m serious. I know a few of you will write (maybe both my dad and Ben’s dad) and tell me it’s not so bad, but I also know that if I fill in one more fiscal spreadsheet, I will lose a part of my soul. I need something different. I need to lose a different part of my soul for a change.

• Being enraged also means being emotional in general. Today I came home from work and found that Ben had cleaned the kitchen. I don’t mean that he simply washed the dishes, I mean that he cleaned even the inside of the refrigerator and, therefore, emptied about a dozen terrifying old leftover Tupperware horrors that have been sitting there for months. These horrible leftovers were so terrifying that I’m not sure I could have done it without crying and jumping up and down a little in that grossed out way. But as you can guess, when I walked into the kitchen after work today I cried. Because I am an emotional wreck with a great boyfriend.

I have been trying for over a year now to synchronize my monthly subway pass with my monthly birth control refill. The plan is just plain genius: two things that I have a tendency to forget about would work together so that I forgot neither. If I tried to get on the subway and found that my card had expired, it would immediately alert me that I needed to refill my birth control prescription. In the same way, if I first realized that I needed to refill my prescription, I would then know to renew my MetroCard.

However, things just aren’t that easy. I feel like I’ve been trying at this forever - and putting in real thought and effort. But life has a way of getting in the way of things I’m trying to do to make life get in the way less. The dream seems very far away now - and the dream of synching these two things up with my rent (Can you imagine! The genius!) seems even more impossible.

Then today, with my subway pass running out weeks before my prescription despite my best efforts and most intricate plans, I realize that I need to move on.  Give up, if you must. And I wouldn’t consider myself the giving up type.

It’s like when I tried for years to achieve an underwear drawer that consisted of 100% matching bras and panties. People in the movies do it - why should it be that difficult? I have many pairs of matching socks and even two to three matching outfits - why shouldn’t I have a collection of cute and coordinated underthings?

But it’s impossible. It’s cold fusion. It’s a wild horse with a free flowing mane that you will never catch or tame.

Basically, it’s math. The elastic on underwear and the stretch on the bras have different life spans! And do you want to throw out perfectly good pair of underwear before their time? Or throw away a well-fitting bra just because its partner in crime lost a well-fought battle against my waistline? Sure, I could purchase bras that are all the same style and color and matching underwear that was all the same style and color (maybe black or white or beige) but that would thwart another impossible ongoing life goal of mine, which is to look cute and different all of the time.

I have to get it through my head so that I can focus on other things: I will never have all matching underthings. I will never have a well-organized Tupperware set - the ones where the lids snap together so you never lose them and so that you can store then easily. I will never buy fruit and eat it all without 70% somehow going bad in the bowl, before my eyes, as if I’m helpless to eat it - not matter how much fruit I buy at the grocery store each week.

I don’t throw in the towel all that often. On a larger scale, I’m pretty sure that I will one day fulfill my career aspirations and become satisfied with my station in life. But these smaller things - these subway pass Tupperware things will never come to be. It’s something I have to come to terms with.

It helps for me to think of people I know who do have these little things under control. You know, those people with the perfect fruit bowls and weekday lingerie sets? They’re always a little creepy, right?

After an almost week-long absence, my annoying cubemate is back in full force. It seems even worse this morning because I think I lost some of the tolerance I had built up for her while she was gone. It feels like rolling around in the snow naked after being in a hot tub as opposed to simply rolling around in the snow naked.

The problem is that she talks on the phone ALL DAY - she literally picks up the phone and dials someone before she sits down in the morning. She doesn’t get coffee or turn her computer on first, she is on that phone like it is crack and she is a crack addict. A crack addict who also loves talking on the phone.

Mostly, when she is not on the phone treating her fiancé like he is a toddler incapable of the simplest tasks or understanding of the most basic emotions, she is talking to her girlfriends about how fuuuuun things are and how cooooool and aweeeesoooooome things sound. She is also getting married soon, and the incessant wedding talk somehow permeates even my loudest and most rocking iPod defensive strategies.

Her second favorite topic, aside from the minutiae of her lame Valentine’s Day wedding, is how much work she has to do. It makes me wonder how much she could theoretically get done if she, I don’t know, hung up and worked on a project or two. We may perhaps never know.

And it isn’t just me that’s bothered. The only other two people in her vicinity have already written me emails this morning with similarly hopeless-yet-caustic comments about the deterioration of the quality of our workspaces.

This morning in particular, I am overwhelmed with an idea I had in which I would spend the whole day on the phone myself, not hanging up between calls but merely tapping the receiver in between dials. I would talk to everyone I knew, telling them how much fuuuuuuun I was having and how aweeeeeesome and cooooool and niiiiiiiice their weekend plans sounded. I would hold the mirror up to her face, and she could partake of her ugly, ceaselessly chatty reflection!

The calls would get more and more obviously annoying, as I said things like, “Ohmygawd I just have so much work to do - sometimes it feels as if I don’t even work at work, but merely regurgitate the cloying details of my 30-something social life! Details that often only consist of drinking a responsible amount of white wine and being nitpicky about my fiancé!”

Or, when I started feeling especially evil, ”You know what’s a really interesting topic to talk about exhaustively? My cubemate’s totally clichéd Valentine’s Day wedding! Let me tell you more about the flower-ordering process in such a drawn-out manner that you will get nauseous the next time you even smell flowers.”

And I would go on and on, all day, until my cubemate got the message that maybe - just maybe - it was neither aweeeeeeesome or cooooooooool to ruin everyone else’s work environment.

Or maybe I should just get some work done. Talk to you laaaaaaaaaaater, sweeeetie!