The Apex of Sucks for You

Here we go again, carefree and cubicle-less. And I am only carefree because I just paid all the bills; next month is going to suck; won’t be feeling so free and happy then will I? But right now I am loving it.

I am no good at corporate cubicle bullshit. It’s like being in high school, and I hated high school. Only now instead of cliques of snotty brats with boyfriend jackets and mall hair, it’s teams of cheap skirt suits with bad bobs and head bands. God help you if you’re in with the wrong crowd, or in my case trying to stand outside the fracas and stay unnoticed.

The final straw was being quite loudly, enough for every prairie dog to hear, called into one of the 14 manager’s office to explain why I had not returned a customer's call. However, all our calls are recorded and with less than one minutes effort, the desperate to prove her worth among all the bosses cow, who had herded me into her office, by which I mean a cube that has all four walls, found the call and clearly heard me returning the customers call and satisfying their needs. Something I am sure that particular, now ex-boss, is all too unfamiliar with doing. I was dismissed without apology or explanation, to everyone who had witnessed my scolding, that I had not been derelict in my duties.

And while you may be thinking; “that is the apex of sucks for you,” you may be right and that's a good thing, because it all gets better from here. Yes, I now have to find another job, but that’s just it. It’s just a job. I’m still gainfully unemployed in my chosen field of writing and therefore have lost nothing and I solider on unscathed.

Besides how many of you would love, just once, to tell a crazy bitch to shove it and walk out with as much of your cubicle décor that you can carry stuffed in your purse? So what if you can pay your electric bill next month, it’s overrated!

Clerks

We went to Panera Bread and there was a kid working the counter named Dante. So I asked him, "So Dante," are you even suppose to be here today?" He said no, but thanked me for asking and gave me some bagel samples. He totally got me, I love it when that happens.

It's Electric

It spans the generations, the color wheel, and economic barriers. I’m told in some states you must have it at the wedding for the marriage to be legal. We had it at ours, Wayne just doesn’t remember. Granny does it; the kids do it, although not as well as the able bodied adults, hell even the priest does it if he’s had enough wine. But even so, I was a little surprised to see it done in the middle of the dining room of the Greek restaurant we visited last night.
But perhaps I shouldn't have been; because it also spans the species.

YOU DON'T GET WHAT YOU WISH FOR YOU GET WHAT YOU WORK FOR

I saw this recently on a kid's tee shirt. Well, she could have been anywhere between 18 and 25, but she looked like a kid to me. The shirt struck me for two reasons. First you don’t usually see tee shirts like that on kids. There were no skulls flipping the bird, no effigy of a long dead rock icon, just YOU DON’T GET WHAT YOU WISH FOR YOU GET WHAT YOU WORK FOR. My first thought was this kid must be an athlete, because watching the Olympics makes you realize how hard those kids work to get what they want.

So then my second thought was me. (Usually my first thought) I was doing all this wishing I would win the contest and my script would make it to TV. I even asked other people to wish for me. And when I did not win and it was time to work, I have not been able to get it going. I managed to compile a list of agents I want to query but I can’t seem to finish the query letter. I found some contact info for the actress I would love to play the lead, but I am not sure if she would even read my mail. The problem is that I am spending time looking for places to submit, and can’t seem to get down to the work of writing. Writing the query, writing more episodes, writing more posts. I can’t seem to get back to working for it instead of wishing for it.

If you can find it in your hearts, please wish for me that I can find the inspiration to stop wishing and start working. Thanks and here’s wishing you a nice day.

NO TV FOR YOU!

My sitcom did not make the top 25 in the script contest. I am somewhere between screw them, they are stupid, what do they know; and screw this, I am stupid and what the hell do I know about writing for TV. The latter smarts. However comma I have always prided myself on being tenacious, occasionally to the extent of the retarded mindset of a pit-bull who won’t let go just because you can’t make him; so I am working on agent query letters. Also have no idea how to do that.

Anyway, who says I can’t write for TV, except for those contest guys and my mother who says I should get a job for Christ’s sake, as if Jesus needs me to have a job, he’s doing ok look who his dad is. I mean who better to write for TV than me, I was raised by a TV. A nice one that sat on the floor and later was a nice stand for the new TV. And Paul Lynd never sent me out of the room when he wanted to say something blue.

Some of my favorite shows could be a little frustrating, but maybe that’s why we watched them. Like I knew from a young age that somebody should have kicked Gilligan's ass, I wanted to be Ginger, even though I am really more of a Mary Ann, and that the professor was bangin both of them. I knew Mrs. Brady was well quaffed bullshit and that my human mother was a lot more like Alice and Alice from Mel’s Diner.

I loved Dick Van Dyke, maybe more than Captain Kirk, I loved Mary Tyler Moore, but not as much as Dick and I love Rhoda but not as much as Mary. Why couldn’t they let those girls be happy, do you think Mary was really so big a prig that she couldn’t keep a boyfriend and was Joe really that bad? No, you just can’t mess with the formula. What happened after Sam and Dianne got together, Maddie Hayes and David Addison bumped uglies? Stinksville! Do you really think Ted is ever going to meet your mother? Not if they want us to go on watching.

See, I know how TV works, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But my script isn't a rehash of old formulas either. It has some really funny, snarky characters that make you laugh, maybe even cry, (when I get around to writing the very special episode that you and your family won’t want to miss) and interesting, relevant in today’s world storylines.

So, I know that trying to get my show on TV, or get my books published is like trying to win the lottery, but even my mother says you can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket, and somebody’s gotta win.

Update: Not Going To Hell

We were in the grocery store the other night, (I ended the self inflicted Wal-Mart purgatory), and there he was! I asked Wayne to go and look at him and he was not impressed. I guess the only reason I thought I was impressed with this boy, is because I thought he was impressed with me. Gawd, am I a desperate attention whore. But I feel better now that I have figured out that I was never really attracted to the boy, I was attracted to the thought that a boy like that could be attracted to me. The kind of boy that was never attracted to me in high school; or later when I started going to dance clubs. The kind of boy that all the girls loved and all the boys did too. I just wish I had spent less time lamenting boys like that and maybe I would have found my man sooner.
Super love you Wayne; I am very impressed with you and endlessly thrilled that you are attracted to me.

That Is So Un-Kewl

I am awake. I am a sentient nerd.

The reality that I may always have been a nerd and not known it, really harshes my buzz. I thought I was kewl. I rebel to the point of screwing myself regularly, whilst thinking I just stuck it to the man, I wear pink converse tennis shoes, classic kewl kid garb only slightly milded by the hue, and I use the f-bomb as an adjective every chance I get. You see, I am just as kewl as I was in the 10th grade. Which would be totally rad dude except that I keep catching myself doing way un-kewl shit.

Recently I became aware that when I greet my neighbors I usually say, “hey neighbor”. I thought this was a good way to deal with the fact that I can never remember anybody’s name. And I caught myself concluding a voicemail with “okey doky doodely doo, I’ll talk to you later”. WTF! I shiver to think how many times I may have done that before my awakening.

OMG! Even though I am fluently using f-ing text abbreviations I have begun to think I may not be knarly after all. In fact I think I might be Ned Flanders.

Roach Bait and Weed Killer

Last year for my birthday the neighbors gave us some “wine”, along with a powdered mix that you add to the “wine”, and blend with ice for “merlot” “slushees”. Hey at least they made an effort, misguided as it was, to give us wine and not just wine stuff.

We stuck it in the wine fridge and forgot about it. Well, we were so out of wine that the other night I opened it. In a former life I have drank: Mad Dog 20/20, Manischewitz, Boonesfarm, Bartles & James (all varieties) and some homemade stuff my older sister’s friend stole from her grandfather’s basement. But even I could not drink this.

It was so bad I couldn’t pour it down the sink because we have a septic tank and I was afraid of what it would do to the little turd eaters that live there. Don’t want to kill the excrement devouring microbes that keep the front lawn from becoming a really big loo. And I did not want to pour it in the yard and kill the grass I have been trying all summer to save.

What to do? Once before when we had some really bad wine, the kind from a big glass jug, Wayne’s dad told me if I put it in saucers on the floor the silverfish and palmettos, that invaded the apartment we were living in, would crawl in and drown. It didn’t work and I ended up polishing off the jug, (don’t tell Wayne, but I couldn’t help it he was out of town, and I was lonesome.) But this “wine” was worse than that, and since we are bug free, knock wood and thank you God, I poured it in the cracks of the driveway to kill the wayward weeds trying to grow there.

So, I won’t say if it kills weeds, bugs, or septic systems don’t drink it, because the exceptions to that rule would be too numerous to list.

Fall?

This month is the 6th anniversary of our being in Florida, and I have learned to discern differences in the seasons. We definitely have a winter and a summer but the meandering into spring and fall is subtle and easily missed.

Today while I was watering the lemon tree, I felt the vaguest hint of fall in the air, or smelled it, I don’t know, both maybe.

It reminded me of being a kid at the pool; maybe it was the humidity or that sometimes we can smell the ocean here.

And I remembered the slight melancholy feeling of summer ending, going back to school, and no more pool.

I remembered the promise of the holidays, which as a kid seemed so much further off this time of year than they do now.

There was just an indefinable something this morning, maybe the way the sun hangs in the sky in August, maybe just that it’s August.

Too Good to be Threw

I just reconnected with an old employer from waaaay back in 1984. Thank you internet. Kate ran a consignment store in Columbus Ohio, called One More Time, and I worked there as a clerk. I was quite impressed and sometimes a little intimidated by her, but I watched her and learned how a strong independent woman operates. Those were some fun times; I learned a lot of valuable lessons, and when I took a crack at running my own store, 10 years later, I even bought her book.

When I worked at One More Time I was 19 going on 2 and not the most confident person on earth; somewhat used to being damned if I did and dammed if I didn’t. I think Kate knew that and wanted me to grow some backbone. “Show some initiative Wendy.” she told me once in a way that made me think my mousey little fluff ball act was not going to cut it with this woman; and so I did. Not exactly a moment Helen Reddy would have sung about, but it did have an effect on me, and many times over the years being the first to speak up or show a little strength has helped me get to where I wanted.

And when I was breaking up with the architect and not showing up for work and being a crying mess when I did show up, she told me, “Wendy, work can be a break from what is happening in your life.” Well, I never forgot that either and it has worked for me, even though I did not get it when she said it, because I thought breaking up with a boyfriend of 3 months was worse than death. But since then there have been times when I thought, thank God I am going to work tomorrow and won't have to deal with this or that...

After my most recent experience of working for ass on fire women, I look back on what I remember as Kate’s no BS attitude and long for a logical work environment, even though at the time I didn’t realize how good I had it. But Kate wasn’t all brass. I was living in a basement apartment riding the bus to work, and if I missed the transfer, I stood in the snow, froze like hell and was late. That winter, Kate gave us Christmas bonuses….and it was enough to buy that car from my sister’s boyfriend that I had been talking about. Checks were presented at a nice restaurant, also courtesy of Kate.

I could go on, but suffice it to say I remember what she did for me and others. One of the girls working at the shop went on to buy it, ran it quite well and even expanded it. Kate also got her man to give me snorkeling lessons so my Ohio wouldn’t show too much when the architect took me to Key West. And when I bought a to die for gold jacket from one of her regular customers on the side, she barely said a word. (Probably should have fired me, sorry about that Kate.)

So when I got her response to my email today, and she remembered things about me, I started to remember all the things I admired about her. Thanks Kate for the job, the bonus, the advice, and the friendship, cause I didn’t know it then, but you were a friend.

Auditions

Last weekend I went down to Hollywood Florida to audition for The Biggest Loser. I went last year and met two women with whom I am still friends. In fact this year I auditioned with one of them as a team. But I've got to tell you, the whole thing was a big fat rip off; pun intended.

We waited in line five hours outside of the Hard Rock Casino, enduring disparaging looks from drunk asses staggering their way home at five in the morning. If you are hammered, shoeless, alone, no purse or phone, with your too tight, I guess you could call it a dress, caught in your cottage cheese ass crack, while your fake boobs bounce precariously out of the top of your hooker red garb, and you stumble past a line of fatties three or four times, while looking for your car or your pimp or whatever, I don’t think you should throw nasty looks. At least the queue of chunks was looking for a way to help themselves.

Then there was the lanky waif who asked what the line was for. Pestered by the reproachful inquiries, on of the portly crew informed the poor witless imp that we were all waiting for the cupcake eating contest to start. This drew only minor snickers until she doubled back and queued up with the rest of us. She did look rather hungry. Her boyfriend soon rescued her and whisked her off in pursuit of a hot sign at Krispy Kreme.

Despite the onlookers, the first three hours in line weren’t too bad. We laughed, told stories etc., but then the sun came over the building behind us. We spent the next two hours standing in the south Florida sun trying to keep our hair and makeup looking good for our audition. Audition…what a load of crap. When we finally did get inside, we waited more and then we were herded into an arena where we had to run a gauntlet of vendors hawking everything from fat burning water to diet programs to sugar free chocolates. (The chocolates were actually pretty good.) All that time in line and then we have to walk through a live infomercial just to get two, regulated by a girl with a stop watch, minutes with a casting person. And, there were eight of us in each group, so that gave you like thirty seconds to “audition”.

At first I was disappointed that we did not get picked, but now that I think about it I am relieved. One day I will be a healthy weight, I will be published and maybe even sort of famous. So, do I really want clips of me in spandex shorts and a sports bra all over You Tube? I think not. Or more realistically; do I want everyone where I or my husband work to know exactly how much I weigh? I’d rather give you my checking account number.

So that’s it for my attempts to humiliate myself on national TV. Unless of course I get the call from Deal or No Deal; I would so take the deal at any offer over $250k.