Caterwauling

It’s 6:22 p.m. on a Thursday and my night to pick up dinner for my sickly mother. But lo, I’m 60 hours in already and probably have another three more to go AT LEAST. And don’t get me started about how painful Fridays are.

It’s my last week at the Alligator Ranch. I thought I might get to lunch with my friends (hah. Why try now after three years) or maybe get to have a beer with them (hah. Why try now after two years).

It’s like the universe wants to be sure I hate everything until the last possible moment until it goes away and so do I.

Film at 11 if there were anybody else left in the building I could choke. No danger of that, ever!

Another messed-up toof, another dentist appointment I have to reschedule.

Somebody give me my six-month medallion for being yam-fit-free …

I keep thinking it’s Thursday. A side effect of working all day Sunday, I imagine.

My new hire is continually mind-boggled at how much work I do. And how numerous and complicated our processes are. And how I’ve mastered pretty much everything. And yet how much guilt I have to carry that I can’t spend all 24 hours working because that’s just how much there is to do.

He reminds me constantly, in a big way, how lucky the world is to have me in it. It’s a nice reminder that I can easily be replaced, but I am absolutely irreplaceable.

Nice to be appreciated.

A friend told me two years ago he’d be a successful copywriter and he’d be doing it from France. Today he posted on Facebook. From France. After a HUGE money-making copywriting campaign.

So thrilled for him, and so ready to say I’m going to be the housewife of a rich broker/trader with a novel-writing deal, and I’ll be in Paris in two years.

Had a bittersweet moment yesterday, and a revelation from it.

One of my favorite people got a job at one of my favorite companies. I think it will be a great match.

Both sets of people saved me by introducing me to each other at the lowest point in my life. So, that they are reunited, it really does feel so good.

But I was kind of … I’m not sure what the emotion is … because I should have been qualified for that job. Instead, I have so many tasks (non-resume-builders) that take a ton of time that won’t translate to other companies.

Not that I’m looking to leave but as an erratic fool at a prior job taught me, stellar employees still get thrown out on the street when we have lovers to pay off with company money.

In a way I figured I’d end up at that company. But not doing the same job I’ve done for the last 10 years. It would have to be something more.

I’ve done the Groundhog Day thing too many times, thanks. Wake me up when it’s all over. When I’m wiser and I’m older. That sort of thing.

So maybe what I need to take away from this is that I have probably moved on from that company for good. And that if I intend to be anything resembling happy, I need to find a way to acquire the skills that role requires (and lose a few that I’ve unwittingly mastered — perhaps just stop doing them?). And if I can put them to work where I am, all the better.

The Atlantic points out how the stripped-down version of Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” for the “50 Shades of Grey” trailer is the best part of the tattered mess that is the book/film.

“(Beyonce’s) presence suggests that a 50 Shade fantasy for women is not just to be with Christian, but to be him.”

I admit I bought all three audiobooks and barely got a third of the way through the first one. (The things you do while stuck on 95 in a thunderstorm …)

At first I thought I might like it because, let’s face it, women who are in control in every area of their lives could stand having a man in charge for a change. Because even those in charge really aren’t. It’s the illusion you feed them to stoke their widdle egos so they can swing their widdle dicks around with some misplaced sense of pride.

In any event, if I heard Anna Steele mutter “Oh my!” one more time, I was going to hurl my 5S out the window whilst driving that hideous highway.

I imagine the movie cannot possibly be worse than the book. But in this case, I think if I’m going to spend any more money on this awful franchise, it will be for the soundtrack. And if I want to see weak men with a God complex fueled by strong women who have to act simple so as not to overshadow them, well, I don’t have to pay fourteen bucks to experience that.

At the point you know it’s going to be a working weekend, do you cut bait relatively “on time” since your weekend is fucked anyway, or do you try to make as much of a dent as you can and ruin your Friday night as well as everything else ahead?

Six weeks till I arrive in the Keys for a long weekend … and eight weeks till I hit the Midwest for ONE WHOLE VACATION DAY. Also known as a SATURDAY.

Susan Lowenstein: “What did Savannah do after your mother burned her journals?”

Tom Wingo: “She took her fingers, and she wrote in the sand. And then she wrote in the air. She wrote poetry so mother wouldn’t understand it.”

Lowenstein: “In a sense, your mother helped to create a poet.”

Tom: “Bullshit, Lowenstein. She created a schizophrenic.”

Relevant to my interests.

Every time I go to Orlando, it’s like going into the wayback machine.

Like, deja vu hits. Crazy shit happens that’s a sign of something else. I see people who look familiar and stir up old memories. And I feel so freakin’ melancholy midway through the trip that I cannot wait to leave.

I had three such instances this past weekend.

I may talk about the others another day. The one that haunted me the whole drive home was when I was sitting at the pool and a good-looking guy caught my eye.

He looked familiar. From the hair to the jawline to the body to the smile … I had to do a triple-take.

He was playing in the fountains with a little boy, about 4 years old. I didn’t see a wedding ring. But there was a set of grandparents and maybe a sister with him.

When I say he caught my eye, I mean it exactly that way — HE caught MY eye. I was watching him and he was watching me watch HIM.

If I had the balls to go up and talk to him, we could be telling a love story at some point. I feel that strongly about it.

The thing is, he reminded me of someone I got over a long time ago.

And so I sat in the shallow end, watching him and thinking of someone a thousand-plus miles away. Wondering if he would have been a good husband … whether we’d had kids … and how good of a dad he probably would have been to our kids. That we’d probably have a timeshare like the one I was in. That he would have probably been the one certain thing in my upheaval-filled life.

The thing is, things wouldn’t have worked out that way. I was always too much of a live wire. A restless soul. A flirt. A “leaver.”

I mean, maybe I wouldn’t have been. Maybe I would have been blissful and happy to build that life with him.

But we all know me. And if it didn’t fall apart on its own, I would have likely found a way to burn it to the ground.

But seeing “him” being sweet and cute and amazing at an overpriced villa at the happiest place on earth, well, wow. The thought of “cheers-ing” with frozen mango coladas and being happy and tanned and relaxed — maybe during an extraordinary week in an otherwise-ordinary life — haunts me still.

“Your story’s completed. Mine it’s a long way from done.” — Sister Hazel, “Champagne High”

I must look tired. A friend at a different division of the company said I should suggest renaming it “Round-the-Clock Publishing.”

It’s … not a bad idea!

It’s been one of those days where I was so stressed out that I ate my snacks for tonight’s road trip by 9:30 a.m.

Now I’m just tired and crabby and mad that I didn’t bring my laptop because I can’t LEAVE at a reasonable hour and go work from my destination.