Life in the Slow Lane

My desk is the first in a bank of desks pushed up against a wall. Every morning I come in, drop my purse in my file drawer and begin on my pile. Invariably, I hear buzzing, and I roll over to my file drawer, open my purse, and check my phone to see if it was the culprit. Nope. More buzzing. Am I hearing things? Is my computer buzzing? Has another construction crew moved in? Maybe I need to ask if the buzzing in my ear is bothering anyone else. Nope. They didn't hear anything, but they check their phones just in case. Four desks away "Oh! I have a text message!" For some strange reason, I cannot hear my phone vibrate in my drawer, but I can hear any of the other four phones every time they buzz. So if any of you ever need to reach me while I'm at work, let me give you the number for one of my co-worker's.

"Do you happen to know anyone who house-sits?" "Um... well, um... I guess technically, um... I do... ButItrynottoletpeopleknow." "Oh, well, would you consider house-sitting for me? I paid two hundred dollars to put my dogs in a kennel over the weekend and they came back dirty and sick." "Um..." "The little puppy was sick." Folks, how can you say no when saying no means a puppy might get sick? I keep telling myself I am not going to say yes as many times as I did last summer. Last summer I needed a place to live, this summer I don't. Yet already I have eight assignments I couldn't say "no" to. Those big, sad, puppy dog eyes... and I haven't even seen the puppy yet.

School is in session and that means that the post graveyard is getting larger and larger. For those of you who don't know, the post graveyard is the place that half-finished and barely-started posts go to die. There they linger in drafts, perhaps funny at one point, perhaps of some interest once upon a time, but now they wilt. But do not mourn too deeply, Dear Readers, I have a sinking suspicion that come time for me to work on my two final papers, those posts will walk like the zombie of that bad movie I never watched. And they may fall just as flat.

This week someone wrote to tell me of a person who made it a goal to write a letter of encouragement to someone every day. For quite some time I sat there thinking "That would be so cool to do. But where would I find the time to do it? How horrible is it that I don't have the time to encourage people?" And then I realized that I already do write letters of encouragement to someone every day. As a matter of fact, last week I wrote 63 letters of encouragement. I feel better now.

I'm beginning to think that I need to schedule "Big Girl Days" on my calendar... days when I will be grown up enough to schedule appointments and fill out reams of paperwork, days when I will not procrastinate for months about making a phone call. Maybe I didn't do enough of this sort of thing in my "pretend play" as a kid. And now my make-believe pretending is that if I put off being a big girl, it will somehow be easier.

I once thought it would be an interesting experiment to connect the number of name tags acquired and required to the energy level of extroverts and introverts. For instance, the week I was given four separate name tags I began to contemplate the fashion value of a paper bag head covering. I have not yet finished the thorough testing required for any conclusive decision, but I thought of this again this past weekend when the name tag made for me proclaimed "Roxanne." Now it might surprise you, but in all of the names I have ever taken for myself or have ever been given to me, Roxanne has never made that list. Nor, as my camp-mates so lovingly nicknamed me, has "Roxie." Nor should it.

I never really understood why sticky-notes were such a hot-ticket item. Sure, it came in handy every once in a while, but certainly not enough to justify buying many little cutesy designs rather than sticking to the classic yellow. At my desk I had one little pad of the size post-it note that everyone thinks of when you think "post-it note". And it lasted me for more than a year, I think. And then I began receiving designed sticky-notes as gifts. At first I wasn't all that eager to use them because they didn't stick as well. But then I came to have more than what would fit in my specially dedicated "sticky-note drawer". The only solution to that problem is to begin to use them in a way that doesn' t require they stick for more than a few short minutes. And so in the midst of training on writing letters, I pulled out my collection and left one sticky-note on every letter. "Great job!" "Nice Work!" I thought I had been saying tha