Life in the Slow Lane

My cubicle measures, approximately, five feet by five and a half feet. When my boss first introduced me to what was to become my domain, she apologized for the size, saying that she had wanted to put in a larger one, but unfortunately, her boss said it would violate fire code. I've put my trashcan underneath my desk, but I think I may need to find another place for it, or else I need to get smaller feet. My one cabinet houses the tower to my computer. The cord connecting the tower to the rest of my computer hardware is just short enough that I can't move my mouse or key board onto my desk, they must stay tucked under. Today I had to reject a file because it wouldn't fit in my file drawer. One of the guys came around distributing boxes of kleenex to all of us, and I couldn't accept one because there would have been no place to put it on my desk. But this is all good news. Because my desk is full of useless nooks and crannies, that means that I have lots of room to put kn...

At work I have one job title while working for two unrelated departments, five signatures for emails I send out (and counting), two ways of writing "e-mail", and even two names. At any one point during the day I may need to be prepared to enter data, rewrite outdated policy, answer a caller who only speaks Spanish, talk a caller through an anxiety attack, keep track of the hours I give to each department, meet with one of my bosses to discuss the next level of training, figure out how best to answer a letter that brings up several unrelated topics, or figure out how to side step someone's question about what they can bring me and my husband when they show up and expect us to host them. Yesterday, in training, the me in one department was told to forward letters of interest to the me in the other department. Is it any wonder that after dumbly following a co-worker around the corner only to realize she had not asked me to accompany her that my only response was "Oh, I...

Today was my first experience in returning someone's call to my office line. It would have helped if I had considered the possibility that I would reach her voicemail. It would also have helped if, in reaching for the list of proper phone numbers for her to call back, I had not knocked down two books and a binder. I'm sure the crash sounded very lovely over the phone.

Sometimes I think that I hear my name behind corners and on the other side of cubicle walls. And other times, I know for sure that people are talking about me, but I don't know why... you know, the phone call that comes for my boss asking how to contact me and then never getting contacted. Or, while I'm meeting in the HR office, they get a call asking for some information on me and they agree to talk with me about it later, and then I never hear from them. Or while in a meeting with someone else, they casually refer to notes they took in a meeting earlier that day that has my name scrawled along them. Is it any wonder I've started peering around my cubicle wall to see who just said my name and what kind of look they had when they said it? Seriously, talk about build up. Well, today someone thought that perhaps they should check with me. It seems that just about everyone has decided that I am going to translate the bulk of our training manuals and brochures and other miscell...

If ever there were someone that I would be tempted to hunt down, it would be this sweet woman that I shall call here Millie. Millie is a woman of undisclosed age, living in an undisclosed location, who writes to our organization frequently. In my month of work (celebrated today!) I have personally processed five or six notes from her. In them she occassionally mentions the fact that she was in pain and so wasn't able to write earlier, but always, always, always, sends her love. A year or two ago one of the people in my department tried to figure out her address so we could write her. No success. But week after week, year after year, dear sweet Millie sends us her love. I imagine that with a bit of sleuthing we could find her address, but I imagine that if we did find it, some of the simple sweet charm would be gone. So for now, we smile when we hear from Millie, file her letter away, and dread the time when we realize something horrible has happened because we have not heard from h...

It is a very surreal feeling when you happily walk out the door at work and hear frenzied flapping above your head, making you duck and hurry away only to turn around and find a LARGE blackbird fluttering on the ground.

The good thing about wearing a full skirt is that when your shoe catches on a snag in the carpet and you suddenly find yourself falling, you can rest assured that your full skirt will act as a parachute and momentarily hide your blushing face.

Today I lost brain power. I completely confused my scheduling and forgot some rather obvious procedures. But I would like to lay the full blame for this on fatigued muscles.(The muscle being my brain.) After all, I did translate a letter from Dutch and another from French. Yes, I did use your friend and mine Freetranslation.com , but that can only help you so far... especially when, for some reason, people who use computers think that it excuses them from punctuation, spelling corrections, grammar check, and spacing and those people who do not use a computer have hard to read hand-writing. I feel buff.

I got my first real paycheck today. Of course I already spent it before it arrived, but no matter, I can pretend like I have money. The other day, I was trying to guess at what my tax with-holdings would do to my paycheck, trying to work out a reasonable budget from my estimate. My roommate popped her head in to tell me something and then asked if I was studying. "No, no... just making a budget." "Oh," she said, "you are so cute!" That wasn't exactly what I had thought on the subject.

Provided that I drive the speed limit, my walk to work takes approximately 4 minutes longer than driving. Yes, you can imagine how fast I can walk or how slow the speed limit is around my place. Somedays I am just amazed at how many very cool things I get to see on my walk. Of course there are the snails and landscaped yards, but... and I can hardly believe it, there are actually still conejos in this Conejo Valley! Add fun little lizards and song birds of many different songs and colors, and you might just find yourself breaking into happy, glowing, marvelous thoughts on the beauty of nature. But then, as I did, you might catch some unfamiliar sight and stop to examine it more closely. And then as you make out the faint traces of legs and fur and ears, disturbing images from the Discovery Channel help you remember that nature isn't just fluffy bunny rabbits, darting lizards, and melodious songbirds.

I thought maybe an Oxygen Bar was a new type of energy bar, maybe put out by Oprah and her magazine. And then I thought maybe it was a stick of cleaning stuff that you dropped in with your laundry or dishes instead of measuring out OxyClean. But no, aparently it is the new "in" place to go. Hip youngsters come to an Oxygen Bar to be hooked up invalid-style with plastic piping against their nose, bringing them unpoluted oxygen. Well, no, the unpoluted part isn't exactly true... it comes in flavors.

Growing up it was of my opinion that any room that was equipped with electricity was also equipped with a light fixture. Yes, perhaps the fixture was really only a light socket hanging from the middle of the room with no lamp shade and only a pull cord, but there was light. But now I realize that most rooms (especially bedrooms) usually are NOT equipped with a light fixture even though there are light sockets. And suddenly things are so complicated. The socket furthest away from my doorway is opperated by a switch near the doorway. That corner happens to be the only one where the bed fits. Bedside lamps kind of defeat the purpose of their existence if they must be operated by a switch near the door. I also, naturally, want my alarmclock near my bed. And alarmclocks do not function well when opperated by a switch. Niether do computers. Or phone chargers. Yes, being able to turn on a light at the flip of the switch is wonderful, but I'm hoping that I don't trip on the criss-cross...