Don't Give Notice--Just Flee

Friday was a sad day at my office, as is every Friday, because Friday means that we all have to grudgingly shut down our barely-literate computers, drag ourselves in the direction of the sketchy elevators that have recently taken to bouncing down the shafts like they're dry-humping the cables, and prepare to spend 48 excruciating hours without the majesty of the law to shed its glow upon us.

Shameless plug for continued gainful employment, take 1.

Speaking of things that are actually true, Friday was less than delightful because it was the last day for one of my favorite attorneys real people at the firm. Since he broke up with us to become a government employee, and I'm sure the government will continue to keep us safe by endlessly Googling him, I'm renaming him Michael Scott. Michael Scott is not only a Steve Carrell creation of epic blunder, but interestingly, is also the first and middle name of a guy I used to date. Adding to the fun? Scott is my middle name too, which I felt the need to share on our second date. FYI, guys aren't thrilled you if you say, "omigosh, that's my middle name too!" It just doesn't have the same bonding potential as, "omigosh, I love Metallica and stale candy corn,* too!"

And now, back to our regularly scheduled mayhem. My coworkers and I are, to put it lightly, raucous like two teenage baboons fighting over the baboonette with the most shapely blue ass, and so we knew that we had to do something stupendous to send Michael Scott off to the feds. Classy catered lunch? Nope. Champagne toast with heartfelt speeches? Nah. Hide in his office, catch him off guard, and ambush him into dressing like a preppy Hawaiian woman? CHECK PLEASE!

Correction: We caught him off guard with six cans of Silly String, and then forced him to dress like a preppy Hawaiian woman with a hint of Groucho Marx. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Exhibit WTF:



To be fair, the preppy end of his enviable ensemble was his own doing, because fortunately, he had come to work clothed that day. (But if he hadn't--that's called going out with a dang, yo.) But bless his Hawaiian heart, he kept his party frock on for the rest of the day! Including the balloons, which he eventually tied to various part of his person so as not to lose them.

As I watched him shuffling his hula hips down the hall and asking paralegals if his boobs were on straight, it occurred to me: If I ever leave this firm, there is no way I'm giving any more than six seconds' notice before I stealthily ease out with a tote bag full of post-its and the quasi-functional lamp from my office shoved under my shirt. I'll be there, deeply engaged in the noble quest of helping people form the melting pot of the USorA, and then shazam! I'll be gone! Just like Molly Ringwald's career and parachute pants.

They'll probably find me, but I'd at least have a head start on the Silly String.

*Because it is delicious, and because it is a sound economic investment, since you will be profiting from candy corn futures trading in your teeth for at least two weeks.

Failing the Stress Test

I've missed you, amigos, and I hope the feeling is mutual. I meant to disclose about four weeks ago that I would likely be MIA until April 1, but just like my plan to do yoga every morning during Lent,* I got distracted by shiny things and forgot. April 1 is to immigration attorneys (my employer of choice) what April 15 is to accountants, and since the beginning of February I've been working long, frustrated days and weekends more busily than a ten-buck Bourbon Street hooker. My thigh-high leather boots are really starting to look rough.

I've been meaning to post something quick and dirty** to communicate the sad fact that I've been too busy to blog, but I've ironically been too busy to post something about how I'm too busy to post something. My days have consisted of actually rolling in to work on time for a change, pounding enough coffee to give me the energy to run around the office, wailing like a caffeinated banshee, for ten hours straight, and then coming home to collapse in a pile of laziness on the couch. These extended periods of time spent pretending to be a grown-up have taken a toll on my mental acuity, which, let's be honest, was on thin ice in the first place, and so even if I had the time to write, I'd probably be doing things like typing with no vowels or devoting extensive posts to extolling the virtues of moss.

I realized last Saturday that I was ready to board the mothership with the other space cadets when our neighbor Edward came over to grab a beer with Lawyer Boy. While I had been in the office all day, Edward and LB had been playing man-time in our front yard, using every tool that could saw, hack, or clip to take down a holly tree that most closely resembled a starving hobbit. When they were done, LB had gone on the obligatory Saturday afternoon beer run. Edward walked into our front hall to find LB nursing not a beer, but a strongly-mixed bourbon and coke, and turned to me. "Don't let him play with those clippers after he's finished with that!" he joked.

I looked at him like he had seven heads, unable to believe that he had said what I thought he said. I was horrified. When Edward said "clippers," in my warped little head, I immediately assumed he was talking about nipple clamps. Why does he think we have nipple clamps? Why was he telling us not to drink and clamp? Omaigod, how do I respond to that?

After fifteen of the longest seconds of my life, I realized it was much more likely that Edward was referring to the clippers they had been using all day, than it was that he was giving us S&M pointers. I revoked my own speaking privileges for the rest of the night.

If you don't hear from me again until April 1, please remain calm and continue to breathe normally. I'll come flailing back into action once I climb out of the bathtub of Chardonnay I'm planning on soaking in once the work is done.

*Despite my allegedly solemn promise to Baby Jesus, I have yet to get up and play Crouching Tiger, Hidden Moron in my living room at all this Lenten season. My bad.
**Which would be a departure from my usual ramblings only in being quick.

Absence Made Your Heart Grow Fonder...I Know, Right?

Amigos, I apologize for my absence. I've been crazy-obnoxious busy at work like a college-town bar, which means two things: 1) I haven't been taking a midday jailbreak to let the whole wide Internets know how immature I am, and 2) By the time I get home I'm so burnt out on reading that I want to set Dr. Seuss on fire, so banging out anything remotely funny, or even English, is not really an option.

I don't blog about work for a variety of reasons, one of which being that I like being allowed to show up every day for another installment of I'm Sorry, What?, but to paint a picture of my frustration, yesterday I spent the better part of twenty minutes listening to a client agonize over whether he should sign just his first and last names, or his first, middle, and last names. Things I Wanted To Say But Probably Fortunately Did Not Say: "Your signature looks like you got lit and tried to draw a bird. Sign anything you damn well make up so I can go get some coffee and mental stability! Is that a cockateel*?"

What I Actually Said Because I Enjoy Health Benefits: "Since I'm not the attorney, I can't legally advise you in this matter." Le sigh.

Back on the home front, the most exciting thing to happen to me so far in O'Niner happened this week: Four months after moving into our very own This Old House (complete with This Old Plumbing and This Old Dear God What The Hell Is That??!?!?!) Lawyer Boy and I finally got a china cabinet, so I could unpack the dozen boxes full of my minorly concerning obsession with china, crystal, and silver that had been sitting in the corner like a bubble-wrapped dinner party. Even better, Lawyer Boy made our china cabinet with his own two hands, and the two hands of Bill, my cousin, who's my cousin in a way that no state except Massachusetts legally recognizes. Whatever. Wine is thicker than blood. LB and Bill spent all weekend in Bill's cabinet shop--yes, this was a professional endeavor; it wasn't just LB buying a few make-your-own-birdhouse kits and nailing them together.** The end result was a beautiful Mission-style cabinet, approximately the size of a school bus. I feel dirty every time I say "Mission-style," because I worry that people immediately think "missionary-style," and we're suddenly no longer talking polished wood and beveled glass in a family-friendly kinda way. I'm still amazed that the whole thing was done in one weekend, although I'm sure that if we had wanted something huge and ornate, with curvy cabinets, carved wood, and flying buttresses, it would have been a different story. Impatience is the only reason I didn't insist on a portrait of my face carved into the center cabinet door.

I was two parts excited and one part train-wreck horrified when I saw all my china, crystal, and silver together in one place, because until that point, I had been unaware that I was thisclose to being the eighty-year-old cat lady who throws tea parties for her muu-muu-clad friends with Guiding Light on for background ambience. I almost have enough to have the entire Duggar clan of crazy over for dinner, except I object to serving Tang in my Waterford crystal. Happily, it's really useful Waterford crystal. The goblets hold twenty fluid ounces of delicious (and usually cheap) wine, which means that if you can heft it up off the bar, you've got yourself one heck of a sparkly personal party. I offer that tidbit to anyone who says that wedding registries are only for things you'll never use.

By the time I had filled the cabinet with the full load of my geekery, it was completely obvious that my dining room is officially more mature than I am. It looks like grown-ups live here! I'm so intimidated by my dining room, I feel like I have to go stand somewhere else just to make fart jokes. I don't know how to handle this: I'm so excited to have my dishes back, but I worry that this might be the end of parties involving a cooler full of vodka-infused Kool-Aid (Jungle Juice, to those of your lucky enough to be Hokies) perched in a sticky puddle next to the chili dip on the dining room table.

What am I saying? We'll just move the cooler to the backyard, where the cabinet can't judge us.

*Spellcheck tried to tell me that "cockateel" should be "cockatrice." If anyone knows WTF a cockatrice is, kindly inform me. But I have a feeling it's not an appropriate word to use in front of my dad.
**Reasons I Was Not Involved: I once bought one of those make-your-own-birdhouse kits, strapped on my mad skillz, and put it together, and even though this was before the days when I discovered wine and laziness, my avian apartment came out crooked. Carpentry was out.

My Papery Green Thumb

Today I came into the office with a renewed and unprecedented desire to charge through my work, impress everyone with my wicked-cool productivity*, and make my office a veritable buzzing hive of legal activity and research, immaculately organized and ever prepared to address the pressing legal issues that land on my desk.

So far, all I’ve come up with in terms of real steps to help me achieve this goal is to grow orchids in my office.

Did I read somewhere that keeping plants in your office promotes better oxygen flow and thus increases productivity? No. Did I read somewhere that orchids bring the soothing calm of the Orient inside, helping to alleviate stress and promote rational thinking? No.

Did I happen to read on foxnews.com this morning that President Obama is taking flack for keeping the Oval Office** “so warm that you could grow orchids in there”? CHECK.

This off-hand metaphorical suggestion planted itself deep in my consciousness like Christina Aguilera into the annals of Hollywood’s Tackiest, and I’ve been obsessed with the idea of growing orchids in here ever since about 9:30 this morning. Probably because planning my Orchidopolis beats the crap out of answering emails, organizing files, and actually doing any of the work The Orchids would help me accomplish. I have yet to figure out how to install heat lamps or a humidifier in here without my boss noticing, but please. The day is young, amigos, and I am motivated. And also wily.

Oh, incidental to this whole scheme, I’m the Morticia Addams of gardening. If it’s not dead when I get it, it’s roots-up within a week. Maybe if plants would be a little more annoying when I don’t feed them, like the cat, they’d get their way. Squeaky wheel gets the oil, bitches.

*Apparently, just like in high school, I’m still confused as to what constitutes being “wicked-cool.”
**If I lived in the White House, I would be unable to walk into the Oval Office without announcing to anyone within a 15-foot radius that I was “going into Ovulation.”

Will Work For Fun

Generally speaking, and generally disregarding the days when I try to strangle myself with redaction tape, I enjoy my job. I work by myself, I get free herbal tea, and I have my very own office, complete with a real working door that opens and closes at my whim.

It should be noted that I would perform much less savory jobs, including “examiner of whale bladder function,” “Yankee Candle wax taste-tester,” and “personal assistant to Paris Hilton,” as long as I was guaranteed my own office.

Most of the people at my office are smiley, bland, and dazed enough to keep me on the functional side of spazzed out, but when the more aggressively ridiculous cubicle clowns ding my nerves one too many times, I can just close my aforementioned door and work in peace, prepare important legal documents, and bring forth a new creative masterpiece. Behold, legal work product!

I'm so glad that instead of troubling myself to learn Power Point (The Devil) or Excel (The Devil When Power Point Is Unavailable), I dedicated myself entirely to the mastery of MS Paint. Just the other day, proving that my employer had hired me for a reason other than to provide a continuous supply of cupcakes and pointy shoes, my skills finally paid off: The firm had put together a team to run a 10k this spring, and was taking suggestions for a design for a t-shirt we could all wear.

Alright fine, maybe they weren't actively soliciting suggestions. Maybe I just saw an opportunity to flex my creative muscles and bring joy to those around me. Whatever. I had a great idea for a t-shirt design, so I submitted it to the powers that be:

It was denied in favor of "Running From The Law." Clearly the committee needs to learn some MS Paint.

*While I did add the words to that picture, I did not create the picture itself. It came from the funniest blog ever written.

Flakey McFlakenstein Reporting For Duty

Yesterday, my first day back at work after my ten-day sanity hiatus/Christmas vacay, will go down in history as one of the longest days of my life. The only thing that can possibly compete with it for most interminable duration is the entire televised run of “Little House on the Prairie,” only with fewer bonnets and more profanity.

Before we proceed, let’s just for a minute picture Pa Ingalls dropping the F-bomb.

I know, right?

While on sanity hiatus, I had gotten a new cell phone. It’s a vast improvement over my old one in that it takes video, has a QWERTY keyboard, and actually makes and receives calls. In hoping that someone would call me so I could relax to the soothing sounds of my new rainforest-creatures ringtone, I had kept my new child on my desk all day. No one called except an apparently misguided yet psychic computer at the drug store, to inform me that a bottle of a drug I no longer take was waiting for me. Our conversation was deep and meaningful, but all too brief to offset the mind-numbitude of the rest of the day.

By the time I called it a draw at 5:30, my little brain was beyond fried. I hurriedly grabbed my coat and purse, and vacated the premises with my friend Gray (of Christmas Party Pâté Challenge fame). I had locked my doors, buckled my seatbelt, and effectively safeguarded myself against any remaining vestiges of the workday, when I realized I had left my precious, shiny new child on my desk. By itself. IN THE DARK!

I froze. I choked back panic. I struggled to breathe—but that was most likely a side effect from the fact that I was breathing into a plastic bag to try to alleviate the panic. Manic thoughts raced through my head faster than hippies fleeing a bath. What if someone stole it? What if someone tried to call me and I wasn’t there to be soothed by the rainforest creatures?

Happily, I came up with a solution by the time I was driving out of the parking deck. It was actually NOT to walk back and get the phone. Please. It was a two-block walk in cold rain, and I knew that Lawyer Boy and the cat were eagerly awaiting my arrival. Also my cute, cute pointy shoes felt like aliens were sitting down to a cheerful family dinner of my toes. I decided I would call Dan, one of the attorneys I work for, who was the only person I could think of who would still be chained to his desk at that hour, and I would ask him to put the phone in my desk drawer for protection. I knew he would do this for me, but not before he had plastered a post-it note that said, “this is NOT cute” over the phone’s front screen, a digital picture of the cat in a cardboard box. Whatever. I could deal with him hating on my cat in return for the safekeeping of my shiny baby. I had a plan! Hurray! Long live my mad skillz!

So I reached over and fumbled in my purse, looking for my phone, so I could call Dan…to ask him to put my phone in the drawer. It took me a good 10 seconds to realize the only way I was making that call was if my wallet spontaneously picked up a signal.

Twilight My Candle, Baby

Old goal for Friday night: Paint bedroom doors

New goal for Friday night: Drink a bottle of Pinot and then go watch "Twilight."

Right, srsly, am I the only one in the free world (and the prison one, too, from what I'm hearing) who was completely ignorant re: this whole Dracula-hottie craze till today? I vaguely remember hearing something about the books when they turned into a social force greater than Madonna's chesticles, and how they were inspiring mothers to have frank, real discussions with their teenage daughters about sex, but since I A) don't have teenage girls, and B) am pretty sure it would be considered odd if I started frank, real discussions about sex with random teenage girls, I moved along and forgot about it. THEN SUDDENLY BAM!!! The movie descended on the mortal world and I could no longer ignore it. I wish I could, because I try to steer clear of the emo-world at all costs, but much like the heroin-chic of the 90s, emo-chic is apparently where it's at.

In defense of the heroin chics, at least they shower.

Anyway, all I've gathered is that the movie is a hot-blooded fangsty romance centered around lusty glances and stolen kisses between an emo-girl and an emo-vampire, sprinkled generously with chalk dust and hair wax. Teen romances are always hilarious, and the hilarity can only multiply with the addition of -wait for it- FANGS. Really, people. High School Musical? Unintentionally hilarious. High School Musical with Zac Efron with fangs, as the world's first openly metrosexual vampire? I wouldn't even need wine to get through that one. Plus think of all the doors it would open for the *closeted* mextrosexual vamps. But I digress.

So far the best, and as far as I'm concerned, the most complete plot description ever that I've been able to find is this, from cleolinda.livejournal.com: “Yeah, it’s like, Bella wants to be a vampire but she doesn’t want to be a vampire before she’s had sex as a human, and Edward doesn’t want her to be a vampire but he wants to get married, but Bella doesn’t want to get married unless she can be a vampire, but Edward won’t have sex with her until they get married, and then you put the fox and the grain in the boat and you leave the goose back on the riverbank.” I really don't care what the plot is beyond that, although I know that by saying that, I open myself up to the emo-fans coming after me to slap me or Kill Me For Real.

What I really love is the reference to THE most effing awful mindfuck of a "brainteaser" (read: mindfuck) ever. Did you catch it? The part about the goose and the grain and the corn and the lass that loved a sailor. As I unfortunately recall from grade school AND law school prep, the real brainfart goes something like this (with minor editorialization): You have a goose, a fox, and a bag of grain on one side of the river. You have a lame, lame rowboat that can only hold you and one of the above-mentioned redneck travel accessories, and you have to get them all to the other side of the river. If you leave the goose with the grain and take the fox first, the goose will eat the grain. If you leave the fox with the goose, the goose will get sassy and the fox will eat it. How do you get them all across without one going all Neanderthal on another?

First off, let's be real. You're never going to get a date whether you get your amigos across the river or not, because no self-respecting chick dates a dude who drives a rowboat. But, given that you own both a fox AND a goose, your dating pool might look different than normal. So we'll spot you one for that. That's about as far as I ever got in solving this problem until today. This problem almost ATE MY SOUL until I figured out the answer. The real answer.

GEESE CAN SWIM, Y'ALL. Here's how you do it. You throw the fox in the boat and tell him that if he hits the goose one more time, you're turnin' this boat around. You put the grain in one of those vacuum-sealing bags that are so cool, just because they're cool (the ones that I maybe once tried to seal my hand into, just to see what it felt like). Then! You tie a rope to the goose, and make him pull your lame rowboat across as punishment for sassing the fox. BAM! Done! Problem solved, with enough time to go look for a date to bring home for dinner, when you cook the goose.

There. That problem may have stopped me from studying for the LSATs, but it's not stopping me from drinking a bottle of Pinot through a clear twisty straw, and going to make fun of randy albino fanged teenagers.