The Adventures of Gimpy Girl, Episode 3: Wherein Everything Returns to Blah Normalcy

My knee is mostly better. I won't be running a marathon tomorrow (or ever, ever, ever), but I can now walk up and down stairs and down the hallway without people asking me what on earth I've done to myself.

In other words, I'll need to find some other way to get attention.

Must get that monkey.

I Am THAT Employee

We had a meeting scheduled at 9am, so I left the house early. Then the following happened:

The bus didn't come for 20-30 minutes.
The subway was also delayed, so I waited a further 20-25 minutes.
When I got to work, I wasn't sure where the conference room was, so I ran around the building looking for it. I made a full circle back to my desk, where I asked a coworker for directions.
I got to the conference room and found there was no one there.
I got back to my desk again, to learn that the room had been changed.
I walked into the meeting over an hour late, to learn they had pulled up one of my projects and were talking about how wrong all my data was.
When we pulled up my other project, we were unable to work on it because I had the item locked in the system from my desk. At this point, everyone is just laughing.
While I was supposed to be learning things, I was staring at my boot and discovered that the sole is coming off.

Fact 1: This comedy of errors made this whole morning more fun than most, despite my less-than-stellar job performance.
Fact 2: Meetings are hard.
Fact 3: Boots are interesting.
Fact 4: I originally began this post with an announcement that it is my 500th. Until I realized that 500 does not immediately follow 459.

The Adventures of Gimpy Girl, Episode 2: Wherein I Wonder How I Can Milk This

I could work from home. That would be quite reasonable. Too reasonable, in fact.

I shall work from bed. But in order to stay in bed, I'll require help. I would like this help to come in the form of a trained monkey, because trained monkey! He'll be called Jerry, and he'll have to wear stupid outfits, because I want to be amused. I'll say, "Jerry, fetch me a drink! Make me a sandwich! Now dance, Monkey, dance! With oomph. Really work it."

And then I won't be able to let him go, even after I've recovered, because we'll have formed a bond. I'll take him to work at the office where he can further assist me.

But if he gets promoted first, our friendship is over.

I Just Want to Bang on De Drum All Day

I tried to take a career-development workshop held at my office today. I made it through two hours, during which I took a lot of notes about how unhappy I am here. There are a few other stressors at the moment, too -- mostly the kinds of conflicts that just come from living in a world with other people, but which I hate to my core and make me sick to my stomach. I want to live alone, far away from conflict and ickiness. I was thinking about that and feeling sad, so I carried that feeling into the workshop. Add to that the fact that I'm not interested enough in my own job to talk about it, and that I'm not even remotely interested in the jobs of other people in the room. I didn't see that being a helpful attitude to bring to the round of mutual informational interviews we were about to begin. So I had a chat with the facilitator and decided to just go back to my desk and get some daily work done, because that may be more likely to lower my stress than sitting in a room thinking about how much I don't want anything to do with publishing or normal jobs ever again, and how I'm tired of the way having roommates means always being upset with somebody or wondering if they're upset with you, and wanting to cry.

I'm blogging and crying at my desk instead. Much more productive.

The Adventures of Gimpy Girl, Episode 1: Wherein I Become Asymmetrical

I wiped out spectacularly on the ice on Friday night. Don't for a second think that this means that I no longer love snow with a singular and unreasonable devotion. All it means is that I had an excuse to follow through with the vague plans I already had to do nothing for the entire three-day weekend.

I managed to twist my right knee, ankle, and (only the good Lord knows how) the inside arch of my foot. Any chance it looked like a rockin' dance move and not completely spazzy? Probably not. But since I didn't see myself fall, and, to my knowledge, there is no video footage, we'll go with the idea that it did, in fact, look like I meant to land on my ass in the hurdle pose.

Then I walked for another 15-20 minutes. I was on an errand to exchange some gloves for mittens, and wasn't no little crippled-ness gonna stop me. Not sure if that walking around made it worse or better or neither. All I know is that I did it.

I was on the couch pretty solidly on Saturday, and for impressive chunks of Sunday and Monday. Fortunately, I'm good at watching TV. I learned the word pestilential, thanks to a documentary about Ulysses S. Grant and the Civil War, which is fun (the word itself, not the Civil War or anything that is, in fact, pestilential). Wore heels to my roommate's birthday dinner, which I freely admit was stupid. But I don't care that it was stupid, so there.

Now I'm back at work, learning what it means to have less-than-optimum mobility. It's embarrassing. And slow. But if anyone has the temperament to deal with embarrassing slowness, 'tis I. And on the upside, my left leg is getting all kinds of excercise.

OK, I gotta run and catch a shuttle bus. Or hobble and catch a shuttle bus, rather.

Shark-Fishing with a Spear

Injuries incurred during such an activity would be evidence of awesomeness.

My injuries don't happen during awesome activities. In college, I rolled my ankle during a game of mini-golf. This holiday weekend, I'm on the couch icing my knee because I crossed a street too fast and slipped on the ice. Also not awesome.

I achieve physical lameness through metaphorical lameness.

Which, as a writer, I actually find kind of awesome.

Hello, Readers!

I see the number of folks openly -- nay, brazenly! -- following my blog has risen recently. Hooray, and welcome to you all!

You're joining some fine fellow-followers.

Kudos for Consitency, Little Buddy

"Are you being contrary?"
"No!"

My nephew has hit the Terrible Twos. He's still a good kid, and from my non-parental perspective, he continues to get ever more fun. He can roar like a dinosaur now. And stomp around. So we enjoy the same activities.

But he's also learning to assert himself. And the battles he chooses aren't always ones he'll want repeated to the public when he's older. So I'm going to tell you now.

He needed his diaper changed. He didn't want his diaper changed. He said so. Fair enough. But it was getting changed, whether he wanted it or not. Did he resign himself to his fate? Of course not. That's not how one asserts oneself. One does that by not only declaring that the diaper change is not necessary, but that, once the change is complete, one wants the old, dirty diaper back. One wants it baaaa-haaaa-haaaaaaack.

Like the Israelites in the desert, wanting to go back to Egypt.

Yeah baby, I just compared diaper-changing to a Bible story. Sermon illustration high-five, anyone?