Life in the Slow Lane

So my brother found this cool place . The word cloud of my blog comes remarkably close to explaining the general orderliness of my thoughts these days.

Company mugs at my place of work are made of uncolored glass. You know the discoloration that happens when a mug is used repeatedly for coffee or tea? You know the abysmal feeling when you peak into your mug and realize you left something in it over the weekend? I tell you, a little bit of obscurity can go a long way.

Over the years I have heard some murmurings abut how natural peanut butter is so much healthier than the popular Jif, Skippy, or other brand names that sound like you are having way too much fun to be healthy. Well, I have stumbled upon an even healthier peanut butter. And stumbled is a pretty accurate term. It turns out that the reason your mother always taught you to store natural peanut butter upside down is not just so that it is easier to stir all the oils once you open it, but also so that the oils aren't all waiting on top to be spilled all across the counter and down the cabinets when you accidentally tip the jar over in the process of stirring it all together. However, with all of the oils now missing, the peanut butter has got to be just that much healthier for you. Of course, you can't spread it on anything, but that is another issue.

My chiropractor now sees me more regularly than friends and family. (Maybe I need to change the heading on the sidebar here to "Family, Friends and Chiropractors.) I walk into the office, she pokes around, gushes about how out of place my neck is and, after what sounds like a 21 gun salute, she sends me back to work. All this to say, I have become very aware of the strange feeling of things not being quite right. Something, somewhere is out and things cannot be normal. Today was like that, only I'm not just talking about my spine. Today was the sort of Monday that gives Mondays a bad name. It wasn't just the irate caller who called half a dozen times and gave bad days to half a dozen people, all the while hoping to reach me. And it wasn't just the project I waved good-bye to a year and a half ago that suddenly showed up on my desk with urgent flags. Nor was it the summer morning that required me to pull my sweater tight as I walked into work or the chance walk-i...

In honor of the recent poll results, I thought I would eulogize one of the contenders for "oldest piece of regularly worn clothing" in my closet. One of the low-lights of my eighth grade year (we are talking so low it could be considered subterranean), was PE. The first week of class we were all obliged to shell out $15 or so for a T-shirt and draw-string shorts in eggplant purple and school bus yellow. Then a TA, far too sadistically, printed everybody's first initial and last name so that at no point could you claim the ugly items to not be your own. And we were instructed to wear these items every day, implored to wash them every week, and everyone... boy, girl, prep, loser, or wannabe... could look almost identical in the gray freezing fog of a day not created for running a mile. I frequently suspect that the eggplant and school bus combination was not only a pitiful attempt to approximate the school colors, but a planned strategy to bring similar results as do ora...

Last night I finally sat down to speak with the person who appointed me to form a committee. Turns out he also appointed himself to the committee. I was kind of afraid of that.

My job frequently brings me the underside of news. I feel I could do a journalistic spread on the effect of the current economic downturn on people who are medically fragile using only the stories of people who I have talked with and written to in the last couple weeks that would make people line up at food banks and deacon's funds to donate. Me? I haven't even stopped to check where the nearest food bank is.

One of my co-workers found a little "Panic Button" which she brought into work. When you push the image, two animated voices, in increasing frenzy shout "Stay calm... stay calm... PANIC!!!!!" So far, everybody who has seen it (and heard it) has loved it. Except for me. And so far, everybody who has seen it (and heard it) has wanted to push it again to better distinguish the words. Except for me. And so far, everybody who has seen it (and heard it) has wanted to push it again to show it to someone else. Except for me. Repeat observation two and three. In. An. Endless. Cycle. Any minute now, someone is going to push it and the animated voice in my head which I have tried to muffle will shout in ever increasing frenzy "Stay Calm, Stay Calm, PANIC!"

Only eight more days to vote in the current poll. Inquiring minds want to know!

Just a few recent samples from letters that crossed my desk: "I fell and broke the front two teeth in my mouse and now I must eat only soft foods." "I participate in discipling, teaching, and cancelling." "I was very sorry to hear about your accident and how now you are having general anesthesia." Um... that would be permanent paralysis?

Broaching Old Age There was a time when I thought only old women wore brooches (maybe it is because it is such an old fashioned sounding word?). But friends, not only did I buy myself a brooch, I actually wear it! I must be getting old. Too Close By default I was chosen to model for the upcoming newsletter that will feature my department. It is a good thing that typically pictures in the newsletter are only a couple inches big. I say this only because I don't want people the world over to be able to count how many mustache hairs I have. Young Lady In a call today someone referenced a young woman they are seeking to help. Throughout the call, I also called her such. Turns out she is older than I am. Maybe if I keep calling her the "young lady" it will combat the fact that I am wearing a brooch. "Honey, I need you" Sorry to disappoint, but those are not the words of my SOS (Significant Other, Sweetheart) but the words of a co-worker who misplaced her toolbar....

Earlier this week I went looking for a small bit of information I wrote down nearly ten years ago. I knew I had recorded it sometime in my journal, but now that I have been journaling for fifteen years, I wasn't quite sure where I might find it. As I skimmed through my drawer full of journals, it seemed strange that there were so many events I did not even vaguely recognize. If it were not for the fact that the incidence was sandwiched between events I did remember, and summarized in my less than model handwriting, I might have thought some other person's journal had gotten mixed in with mine. I always suspected that when I chronicled an event it was so a future me would be able to remember the details where only a shadow of a memory existed. Of course, for a time I thought I journaled so one hundred years later a distant relation would know what it had been like to be me, but that was before I realized that even a distant relation might be too close. But now, ten years later...

Recently a writer from an African country has been providing a great deal of merriment at my desk. He has taken to writing quite frequently, and at great length, addressing emails to "Excellence [my name]" and requesting things like the entire staff directory, photographs of me sent by DHL Express, and letters so he and his several children can obtain visas to come and see Excellence Me. I have told him "no" in as many ways I can think of, without actually using the words "no" and he still writes to Excellence Me, assured beyond any reasonable doubt that I will promptly reply with the documentation needed for visas. "The door is steal open", he writes. How comforting.

Sometimes you blink and a month is gone. Of course there were a few things that happened in that month, but evidently not as many as I thought. The first week of June, coming off of a semester full of semester, I carefully sent out birthday cards to everyone on my list. It was a crazy week, and I knew of five celebrations, and I managed five birthday cards. A month later, I called one of the friends I had sent a card to, apologizing for never following up on inviting her out to lunch for her birthday. Not until I hung up after leaving a message did I have the great epiphany that her birthday wasn't the first week of June, but the first week of July. I do that frequently with anniversaries, birthdays, and planned-events-not-good-to-be-forgotten. June and July just sort of blend together. I'm sure you can understand it. After all, everyone has to get halfway through either of them before realizing which it is.