So today.
I took a later lunch than normal for the worst reason possible. I’m ashamed to even admit this.
You see, this morning, when I pulled in at quarter to eight, I achieved my morning goal. I got rock star parking. There is an infinitesimally small number of parking spots RIGHT BY THE DOOR to our building, the other 95% of parking is down this path wrapped around the building. The rock star parking usually fills up by 6:00 a.m. in the morning, by people whose sole purpose is apparently to leave work at 2:00 in the afternoon, so that they can eat dinner by 4:00 and get to bed by 6:30 or something insane like that. But one spot… one glorious spot… in Rock Star Row is usually taken by someone on the overnight shift in the computer room. And they leave at sometime around 7:45ish. Every day, I take this complicated route to the parking lot to check for a good spot. Nearly every day I am denied. But some days… some glorious days… I get lucky and score some sweet assed parking. Then I squeal and do my little Happy Parking Dance. Well, usually while still seated in my car because, hey, I work with those people who are walking up from Peasant Parking, but there is definitely squealing involved.
So I declared that I would be taking lunch at 1:00 to the rest of my team, because, criminal mastermind that I am, I figured that the 5:30 a.m. people would be leaving around 2:00 p.m. giving me ample opportunities for the Happy Parking Dance. However, I neglected to realize that if I left for lunch at 1:00, then I would have to be BACK by 2:00 p.m., seated in my mostly empty cubicle (I’ve started moving to my new home for my new position now), listening to the boisterous exit noises of the 5:30 a.m. crew as they left for the day. No. For that to have been the perfect plan, I would have had to schedule my lunch for 1:15, but that throws everything all wacky. Because I work on a hotline, my team coordinates their lunch times with each other. There’s a 11:00 person, a nooner, a 1:00 and the late person gets 2:00. Whenever anyone isn’t “straight up” (ie. 11:30), everything is all willy nilly and discombobulated for the rest of the afternoon. And we all think surly thoughts about the person who had to go and mess with the whole lunch system. Except that normally I’m the lunch anarchist.
When I left for lunch, I was a bit reluctant. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to give up my primo spot. My parking spot was royalty. It was the Princess Ann of parking spots. Grudgingly I pulled out of my spot and out into my lunch cruise. During the summer, I haven’t been really doing anything over lunch, just cruising around the western portion of the city, sometimes talking on my cell phone, sometimes just singing along with whichever CD I have in the player. I love to drive. It’s just one of my quirks. It started as soon as I learned how and I’ve never really lost that love of driving. I’m not crazy about highway driving, simply because it’s boring. A mile on Vermont’s interstate looks pretty much the same as a mile on Tennessee’s interstate. I like going through the towns and rolling their names on my tongue. I like seeing misspelled signs that make me laugh (“Your in Packer Country” at a sign shop… gosh, I’m totally going to buy a sign from that sign maker!). I like looking at the clusters of trees, searching for eagles on the telephone poles. I like looking at the lawn decorations, even if they’re tacky and usually consist of a flat board painted like an old woman bending over in her garden or even worse, a flat board painted like an old man groping the flat board painted like an old woman.
So I went out and drove around, chatting on my cell phone like some kind of uber executive, only I was just being goofy with my friend in Boston, talking about how good Dave Matthews was in concert and how the guy in the minivan totally checked me out and then cut me off. Yes. I know. I shouldn’t talk on my phone and drive. It’s dangerous. I’m going to invest in a handsfree unit soon.
Then, it was nearing 2:00 so I ran through a Wendy’s and got a nutritious Frostie for lunch. In my mind, I had decided that the entire medium Frostie, since it has nary a whisper of dairy in it, must only have, oh, maybe 150 calories. Sure, it’s chock full of chemicals, but I’m not allergic to them so it’s all good. But I was trembling when I returned to work, edging around the corner and passing the full row of close parking spots. But SUCCESS! Sitting there as if God Himself had decided that I was too good for plebian parking, was a lovely parking spot, nary 30 feet from the door. This one was the Queen Elizabeth of parking spots. It had fat little Welsh Corgi dogs and liked to wear funny hats. I did my little Happy Parking Dance outside of the car, that’s just how good it was. Of course, that gave the smokers something to stare at and then they all gave their approval. By coughing but it was approval nonetheless.
I got back to my desk and my coworker commented that there were 10 Weight Watchers Points in a medium Frostie. 10?!?! That could not be. There wasn’t any dairy in the thing! I think maybe they waved a gallon of milk over the Frostie vat in benediction. And everyone knows that chemicals have no calories! I looked up the Points myself. Sure enough. 10 points. I threw it out. I don’t believe in consuming like a third of your daily caloric allowance with something you can’t even chew.
And then I got an ice cream headache. Mofo Frostie.
The Feverish Fall Fixation continues. Esteban made spaghetti last night and it was so incredibly good and meaty. Screw pasta. I just wanted to eat the sauce with a fork. That’s my winter meat craving coming full force. No longer can I go days if not weeks without eating some kind of meat. I had a crumpet this morning for breakfast and by 9 I was thinking tenderloin. I’m aghast by my cravings sometimes, really I am, but at the same time I don’t know exactly how I maintained my sanity as a vegetarian during winter. It just makes no sense.
The Cleaning Nazi is beckoning. Esteban made his yearly contribution to bathroom maintenance last week. He put a toilet paper roll on the dispenser. Backwards. I’m a Paper Coming From Below kind of girl and the entire Esteban Clan seems to prefer theirs Coming From Above. That drives me insane. If it Comes From Above, then you can’t use the physics of the roll to rip the sheet. You end up using far more toilet paper than you need, stressing an already overburdened environment with your waste. Yes. I know. Too much Utne Reader, but still. I refused to actually go through the anal-retentive compulsion to flip the roll around but every time I went in the bathroom, that roll mocked me. And I had to go and buy those Triple Rolls and make the torment last three times longer than it could have. Gah. But it’s another sign. I wouldn’t have cared less about which direction the toilet paper was facing in June. As long as there was paper, I was happy. But this…. insanity. Absolute insanity.
Is it possible to be affected by cabin fever in the first week of September?
