For a different party, she made a miniskirt out of fruit rollups.

Here's one for the “That Was Suppposed to be a Joke and Now It’s on the Internet?!?!” Files

My best friend sent me an email yesterday with the subject “OH MY GOD.” Last winter she went to a costume party. I don’t know what the theme was, exactly—some sort of construction-worker-meets-Burning-Man-artist kind of thing. She made a fringy miniskirt out of containment straps (used in building) and a sort of a tank top… with much less covered up than a tank top. It was iridescent orange, revealing and, while it sounds scary, it was fun and, well, strappy and not something one would be caught dead in anywhere but a theme party among friends.

Yesterday, she hopped onto the Web site for the organization that threw the party to look up an event date or something, and there she was, in all her glory: a GIANT photo of her in the orange strappy ensemble with one high-heeled-boot hiked up on the wall, give the camera man a (fake, joking) sultry dirty-girl look. On the internet. Yes indeed.

I wish I could post a link, but she’d KILL me. Hey: If you wear a bra made out of construction-worker-strappy things, chances are high that it'll end up online. Oh, it was very, very funny.

Shout out to the St. Paul Photoblog

This semester will be over in two days, 22 hours and 58 minutes.

How I Learned to Knit

I lived in my then apartment with my then husband who, then, comes home from work at 3 a.m. smelling like sweat and smoke and exotic dancer perfume.

My husband drops his clothes by the bed and curls behind me. The neighbors are screaming. They started at about three in the afternoon with vodka, I tell him, and were onto whiskey and with a break to walk to the bottle shop around 8 p.m.

The day we moved in, I locked myself out. I was outside trying to light the pilot for the water heater when the door slammed shut, and there I was in my shorts and bikini top and no shoes, and I needed to borrow a neighbor’s telephone book.

I didn’t know. How would I?

The biggest one, the fattest and hairiest, opened the door in his underwear. He said if I ever needed anything else, anything (wink), I could knock any time.

The locksmith took an hour to get there. I could’ve hugged the locksmith and kissed the top of his head. It took two hours to get the place open. My apartment was the hardest place he’d ever had to break into.

James was his name. The drunk neighbor with his gut hanging over the rim of his underwear.

I cleaned houses during the days, a cleaning lady. I took a calculator to the grocery store because I could spend no more than $45 on food for my husband and me for two weeks. At home alone until 3 a.m., I read books on the porch and hung wet socks over the backs of chairs to dry. I rubbed mold off the bathroom ceiling with a mop and swirled sand down the shower drain. The neighbors were drunk by 5 p.m. every bloody day, and sometimes they weren’t just drunk. But my apartment was the hardest one the locksmith had ever broken into, the locksmith said so.

Even half asleep I knew the sound of my husband’s car coming up the bump into the parking lot. I knew the sound of his door slamming and the sound change made in his pocket when he walked up the stairs. And my favorite sound: his key sliding into the deadbolt, and the turning of the lock.

Now, he curls behind me. It’s a big night for James and the boys. Now they are really screaming. There is body-shaped thud against the wall next to where I sleep. Someone is getting pounded.

My husband gets up. Enough, he says. You’re going to Penny’s, and I am calling the police. No, I say, I’m not leaving you here with them.

I was worried about him. I think about this now, not then.

Get dressed.

No.

Get dressed.

If they know you called the police they’ll kill you.

I agree to get dressed because my husband calls Tiny, the best bouncer they have where he works. He is not so Tiny at all, and he is our friend.

I ask to wait there long enough for the police to come, but my husband knows too much about the police here to allow that, and they’re outside now, the neighbors, I mean, and they’re thudding and punching and snapping the railing to the stairs into pieces. Something like a skull might have just cracked pavement.

Something Happened. The drunks are panicking. Suddenly Penny is honking out front and someone yells Get Rid of It and they thump back inside their place.

From our place, we have to cross their door to get out. Now we can make a run for it, outside past their door with my husband and Tiny—when did Tiny get here?—on either side of me, toward the car. They do this for a living, but I am not a stripper and these aren’t everyday drunks. My sandal slips and I yelp and Tiny yanks me up by the arm so I don’t fall. A hunk of hair runs down the steps in the blood like a mouse in a flood.

Turn around. Through the apartment now, I hoist a leg over the balcony and I am down the fire escape and jump the last 10 feet. Penny’s car goes slow, and I look out the back window at my apartment, where my husband and Tiny are. It is all very quiet.

Penny is my husband's friend, but I have met her once before. My sticky sandals are out on the steps by the screen door. She offers me a beer and I say no. I cross my legs on a pillow on the floor. She makes me tea, and adds a splash of whiskey.

Penny’s house is pink and yellow inside, and she has big pillows and fresh flowers and some music playing that should make me feel better. I sip the drink and Penny declares: I'm going to teach you how to knit.

She sits across from me, and I mirror her because I am left handed. She teaches me to cast on, and I don’t get it, so I try a few times, then how to stitch. Maybe a pot holder, or a scarf, or, you know, it doesn’t have to be anything right now.

So I start, and I’m still sniffling, and the needles click and she goes quite fast. I click and click without thinking and then I stop for the first time and look at it. What have I done? I have made a mess of things—loose loops and holes and tight spots all the way through. She says I have to unravel and start again from the beginning.

I go for a bit without stopping, but can’t go a stitch further once I see I’ve only repeated the same mistakes as before. I unravel and start over and unravel and start over and I don’t feel like I’m getting any better at this. I am slow and concentrating very hard and it is always a mess. I undo my work. I begin again. The telephone rings at dawn.

"The Root Problems of the writer...

...are personality problems. He or she cannot get started, or starts a story well then gets lost or loses heart, or writes very well some of the time and badly the rest of the time, or writes brilliantly but after one supurb story or novel cannot write again, or writes brilliantly while the creative writing course lasts but after it is over can no longer write. The root problems, in other words, are problems of confidence, self-respect, freedom: The writer's demon is imprisoned by the various ghosts in the unconscious."

a quote from John Gardner (in the Forward), Becoming a Writer

[Substitute "writer" for artist or "anyone trying to do what they really, really love."] Discuss:

I handed in 65 pages of work on Thursday.

And I'm glad to have that pile of paper outta my face, I'll tell you that much.

I'd love to write something clever and witty, or funny or... Anything. I want to talk about how I went to the cabin last weekend and the basement flooded and we all scooped water out with snow shovels. Or how my best friend from undergrad just bought her gown for her PhD graduation, or how I spent so long in a lavender-scented bathtub yesterday that I shriveled up to a happy, white, good-smellin' prune. But. I want to eat. Then I want to call my Dad back brush my teeth and crawl into my freshly-changed bed and read my big ole book with the sunflower on the cover and fall asleep.

Sigh.

The Bath

During my visit home for Easter, I dropped into the creative arts center my mother manages. She wasn't in her office, but I saw she hung a print of Mary Cassatt’s Mother and Daughter over her desk. I went to the ballet room where 20 five-year-old girls in tutus played duck duck goose. I saw my mother bend down, unzip a five-year-old’s pink jacket and lifted her up so she could reach the coat hook. She said “Okay, now go put your shoes in the cubby and find a spot on the floor,” with the same tone she used to use with me. I remembered myself at five, reaching up to pick a honeysuckle blossom off the vine in our back yard. "Pinch the bud," she'd said, "gentle, gentle. If you pull the style through the bottom of the petals you can taste a drop of nectar.”

I was raised with my two sisters in a creaky old Midwestern farmhouse, now surrounded by the town that grew up around it. During my sophomore year of high school, Mary Cassatt paintings started showing up around the house. The Bath hung above the bureau full of picture albums. Mom bought a print of The Bath for $5 at a rural library she found while researching her ancestry. Years later, she saw originals at an art gallery, and a photograph of Mary Cassatt. "She looks like your great aunts," she said. "Just like some of our relatives."

In The Bath, a mom holds her daughter on her lap and washes her feet in a wash basin. Cassatt’s an Impressionist, among the ranks of Degas and Renoir, best known for a period where she painted mostly mothers and children in everyday scenes. Like most art, what makes them brilliant is the something else, and here, the something else is the ease of being between these mothers and children. Cassatt communicates a very specific kind of love through the relaxed way a child rests a hand on her mother’s knee, the way a mother holds the child up on her lap with a secure but gentle hold.

I remember my mother taking me out to the garden when I was young to dig my little hands into the dirt while she planted tomatoes. There was no lack of these every day moments, or of love, in our house. When my parents moved me into my first dorm room, she cried and hugged me out the window of the car as they pulled away. “I never even taught you how to make a roast!” she had said. I said, “Its okay, Mom. I haven’t eaten meat in six years.” More recently, when I came home from a year abroad heartbroken and emotionally steamrolled, she sat with me in my old bed, wrapping and unwrapping pieces of my hair around her finger until we both fell asleep.

I suspect that my mother’s love for Cassatt’s work has less to do with her life as a mother than as a child. When my mother was eight, her mother died of a massive brain aneurysm. Grandma was about my age then, 33. Over time, Mom's early memories have blended with stories she's heard or things she may have made up: Her mom trying to curl her hair to look like Shirley Temple’s. Dyeing eggs in a cup of vinegar and food coloring, A fight over an onion.

I returned to Minneapolis after my Easter visit. The ground thawed and tulips popped up as they do. I called my mother to find out how to get candle wax out of my favorite skirt. (Hot iron. Newspaper.) I asked her what the deal is with her Mary Cassatt obsession.

"I dreamt about a painter who was my mother, and the next morning I looked in an art book and saw the painting of the mother bathing the 7 year old girl," she said. "I just cried. Finding that painting did more in healing my childhood than anything has, including being a mother." I had identified with the daughter in the paintings they express a maternal comfort I’d received growing up. My mother loved Cassatt’s work because through the child and mother, she drew out a little bit of the maternal love she had missed.

Today, I miss my sisters.

When we were little, Easter meant it was warm enough to go outside in the early morning in bare feet to search for eggs without getting too terribly cold. It meant that the bush in the back yard would have pink blossoms on it, and we would dress up in our Easter dresses with hats and hose and shiny shoes and have our photograph taken. We would gorge on candy, fidget all through mass and go to our grandmother’s, where she’d give us more candy and our mom would insist we’d had enough and my grandmother would say, “Look at them! They’re too skinny,” and give it to us anyway, which pissed my mother off, also a part of the holiday tradition.

Yesterday, I found an old photograph from about 1982 of my sisters and me. We’re in our old family room (mustard colored shag carpet, plaid couch) watching Mork and Mindy on our big old television with no remote control. We’re all in our footy pajamas and we’re all on the couch upside down, like Mork. We liked Mork. We spent a lot of time upside down—on the couch, at the dinner table, and occasionally we slid down the stairs upside down. It was riotously funny.

With three girls, is often lots of hard laughter. My oldest sister is kind of quiet and introverted very smart and hugely sensitive and occasionally hysterical. The youngest was absolutely hyper active—pretty out of control now that I think about it—and she was always getting sent out of classrooms and away from the dinner table and failing class and making up rediculous words and saying things out loud that everyone secretly knows that you just don’t say out loud and she was creative and nuts and also hysterical. Once, she got sent home with a nasty note from the home ec teacher because she refused to use measuring utensils while baking. She’s an amazing cook—but that didn’t matter. So my mom wrote back to the home ec teacher: “We don’t ever use measuring utensils in our house.” Which made me happy.

My little sis is a worry and a headache and totally lovable and unique and ornery and awesome. She is sensitive and sweet. The week after college graduation, I was in the driver’s seat of my car, which was packed to the gills, ready to high-tail it out of Indiana for Portland, indefinitely. I rolled my window half way down to say goodbye and she cried and blubbered all over the place and left tear streaks all over my window. I didn’t wash the car for a long time because I didn’t want her sweet tear streaks to go away.

So, I miss them, that’s all.

Squirrel Fur Coat, Anyone?

I'm engaged in an ongoing battle with squirrels. I live next to a park, and there are millions of them. They have parties on my roof. They've busted into my place and broken my stained glass window and clawed up my window sills. When I moved in, I had a refrigerator on the balcony (long story) and they used to break into it and put little teeth marks in the butter and steal whole eggs. A few days ago, I put my orchid on the deck to get some sun, and when I went outside to collect it, all the leaves had been munched on.

I want to take them all out with a sling shot. But do I? No, I do not. I am nice.

Last winter, I planted 6 tulip bulbs in pots on my balcony. Everyone's tulips but mine are growing. So today, I decided to dig one up to see what the deal was--Are there roots? Are they all duds? What?

The tulip bulbs are gone. GONE. All six of them. In their place I found a peanut (in the whole shell--two little peanuts) and a stone. The squirrels stole all freakin' six of my tulip bulbs and planted a G.D. peanut and a frickin' rock.

Growl. They have not heard the last from me.

Apocalypse

"WASHINGTON - Call it a coincidental sign of our digital times or a reason to stay up late and stare at the clock. Either way, early Wednesday morning the time and date will be 01-02-03-04-05-06.

At 1:02 a.m. and three seconds on Wednesday, April 5, 2006, it will be the first hour of the day, the second minute of the hour, the third second of that precious minute in the fourth month and the fifth day of ... uh oh. It's not really the sixth year. It's actually 2006 — only in our shorthand is it '06."

Wow. Journalists in Washington have time to write whole articles about this stuff.

LOOK! It's a Mr. Potato Head Darth Vader!

Adjustments

Okay, so I'm working 8 hours a day and taking one class and teaching one class. Two nights a week (in a row) I leave my house at 7 and get home at 9:30. I did almost all my homework for last week, but because I was cramming, I didn't retain anything I read. During class discussion people were talking about stuff in the reading I didn't even have a faint recollection of. The work room? Annie Dillard's deflated frog? What?

It'll only be 6 more weeks--then off of school for summer, then just 1 class in the fall. But Lordy. I'm so tired and so behind and my apartment's a mess. My Creative Process is in severe distress.

Those of you who've done this or are doing the work/school thing now, how the hell do you do it?

Day 1 Report

So, I woke up at 5 a.m. after a nightmare that I arrived at my new job and instead of it being THIS job it was my OLD job, my WORST job, where everyone was 3 years old and I had to teach them the alphabet and make sure they didn't eat play dough and that they got to recess/lunch/the bathroom/gym class on time. And, like my old, worst job, I there were a million out of control brats, I had no assistance whatsoever, and they were all pooping their pants and screaming "Fuck you!" (Three years old. I do not make this up.) and I was trapped in miserable hell.

In reality, I got to work where the sweetest receptionist in the world took my coat and offered me coffee and then a smiley fellow named Bill took me on a tour and told me about his air force days. On my tour, I noticed that all of the machinery—printers, copiers, etc.—has a laminated photo from Office Space taped to it. Milton clutching his stapler. Ron Livingston kicking the shit out of a copier. Kind of funny.

On the tour, there were many introductions and more smiles and hi-in-the-halls and I got to stop by my friend Stef's cube and say hello and then I got taken out for a yummy lunch with my boss and 3 co-workers and we all ate till we were stuffed and I drank far too much caffeine which may be why I'm having problems dividing my thoughts into clear sentences.

My boss, she drinks LOTS of caffeine. She's loud and a little shrill but really nice, if a touch self-absorbed, and her cube opens up to my cube and she has a dorm fridge under her desk. The dorm fridge is full of Coke and girl scout cookies and Twizzlers. She drank 5 Cokes and ate an armload of Twizzlers throughout the day and I drank water, but I did buy a box of Samoas from her kid. We all must do our part.

Then, a big man also named Bill brought me my computer and I spent the afternoon editing surgical instruction manuals. I don't know a damn thing about surgery, but there you go. I am partially responsible for surgeons knowing where to drill screws into people's spines. I have already been nicknamed the Grammar Gestapo, which is kind of funny, as you may have noticed that my grammar isn't great, but it's WAY better than scientists'. People were bragging about my English degree, which has never happened, and they respect my intelligence (!) and I share a sweet, elf-like assistant who will make my copies and order stuff for me and do whatever I ask. That was all quite new to me.

When my boss left, I asked her what time she wanted me to come in tomorrow and she said "Eh, whenever. Before noon."

So far, I like it.

Tomorrow I start my new job.

(I stole this picture from Tom.)

Sunshine.... on a Cloudy Day

A Dozen Things I Really Love
(In no particular order)

1. My friends. I know I've droned on about them before, but my Lordy, how did I get so blessed?

2. Big Fat Lazy Breakfasts. Especially the one I just ate at Bad Waitress with Hayes, my brunch buddy who always orders for me and pulls out my chair like he's all chivalrous.

3. My future. I was telling Hayes about my new job and my school plans and all how great summer will be and the possibility of doing an independent study in the Caribbean. It is so bright, I gotta wear shades.

4. My home. I live alone. I was recently reminded of my old roommate, and I am so very thankful for privacy and space and, well, not having her anywhere near me or my stuff.

5. Book ideas. Thoughts are germinating about a thesis (scary) and some other very interesting projects are starting to float to the surface. Wow. This whole studying-my-ass-off thing just might pay off.

6. Cheetoes and Coke. Together. Perhaps I should just make "great food and drink" its own general category.

7. Massages. When the glittering fabric of life begins to look as shiny and fresh as the roller towel in the CC Club men's bathroom, it is high time for a massage. I hold all my tension in my shoulder muscles, and massages do wonders for my outlook on life.

8. Living in a relatively safe, free country and having opportunities and rights. The US of A has a fair share of problems, for sure, but wow--in my work, I see people who come from serious oppression, war, and poverty like nothing I've ever imagined. We are blessed, indeed.

9. Plants and flowers. See "Eat Dirt" below.

10. Forthcoming financial security. And the forthcoming shopping trip with my stylin' personal shopper.

11. The internet and laptop computers. I love e-mailing and looking up stuff on the internet--especially stuff that just bugs you (Who remade Aerosmith's "Walk this Way"? Oh, right, Run DMC). Imagine life without the internet, or having to walk to a computer lab to use dial-up like we had to in early college. Weird.

12. Good weather. Playing in the first snow. The way autumn smells. Thunderstorms on rooftops. Walking outside on the first day it's warm enough to wear a skirt. The big tree out my bedroom window that gets little buds, flowers, then leafy green, then bright yellow. A cold beer on a hot balcony.

Eat Dirt

I have a window box of dead plants hanging off my balcony rail. I tried to pull them a few weeks ago in preparation for spring, but the hunk of soil came out in a big rectangular chunk: frozen solid.

Today, I went for a sunny walk with my friend Michelle, and she’s got little green shoots poking up through the ground outside her house. Not just poking out, but actually moving little stones to make their grand entrance. She thinks they’re daffodils, but they might be tulips.

I found this very exciting.

I have tulips in a pot on my deck, too. They’re not poking up yet, but the soil in my window box was soft today. I pulled out the dead roots and shook them, crushing the hunks to save as much of the fresh dirt as I could. It was wonderful. So cool and refreshing and relaxing.

I had just watched a program on Nova about how the astronauts, trapped in Mars-trip simulators for 6 months at a time. They were under severe emotional and physical stress. But they were given light boxes and tongs and gloves in which they somehow (with no gravity and funky air) grew and tended to little stalks of wheat. Scientists found that touching the dirt and the plants, especially in order to care for them and eat them fresh, radically improved stress levels.

I could see how. I took a moment to dig my fingers in my pot of dirt, stick my nose right down in there. The extreme cold of Mars, the extreme cold of Minnesota winters: My stress levels radically improved. Oh—it smelled so good. Dirt smells so wonderfully good.

My sister eats dirt. She has digestive troubles, and she is slightly obsessed with alternative supplements. These days, she eats dirt. She pays a lot of money for the dirt, which she buys online. I presume it arrives in little packets at her apartment. Does she mix it in yogurt? Stir it into her martini? Just munch it from garden trowel? I don’t know. Recently, she went a few weeks without her dirt and she felt horrible. This could have been compounded by her PMS and the stress of putting together and art show and a fight with our mother. She blamed it on the dirt. She swears she instantly felt at peace when she got her dirt fix. I told her she’s officially gone over the deep end. But hey—she could be onto something. Dirt is great stuff. It makes us feel better. To which I say: Dig in, sister.

I have procured gainful employment!

Not at T@rget, rather at a company that feels quite intuitively good. I'm a communications specialist. The company make surgical devices and trains surgeons, and their/our purpose is to ease pain, heal injury and help people have happy, independent, active lives. The schedule is flexible and a laptop will be provided for regular cubicle escape.

Eureka! This is very good! The interview process has been ridiculously extensive, and I am glad it is all over.

NOW, a pop quiz.

If you get a good grade, perhaps you will get a present. Perhaps a key-lime pie martini with a graham cracker crust rim from Chino Latino. Maybe a Luke Skywalker Pez dispenser. Maybe a high five.

History of Cavu's Career:

1. My first job was:

A. Babysitting for a family of 7.
B. Sorting worms into bait tins for $1 an hour at my dad's hardware store. (How cheap is he?)
C. Selling paper bags of string beans out of a wagon that I wheeled around the neighborhood.
D. Life guarding.

2. I have been shit-canned from exactly one job. Why?

A. I can't cook.
B. I can't do math.
C. I had... um... a wordrobe malfunction.
D. I punched the boss' kid.

3. I have smooched exactly how many colleagues*:

A. 1
B. 3
C. 5
D. 7

4. Which of the following has not been a nickname given to me by colleagues:

A. Moon Beam (Beam for short)
B. Rutabaga (Ruta for short)
C. George (After the Abominable Snowman cartoon: I will hug him and squeeze him and call him George.)
D. Helium

5. How did I really get my first job out of college?

A. I applied for a job, got rejected, called the hiring manager and asked him to explain himself and he found a different (crappier) position for me.
B. I totally lied on my resume. I prefer to call it "embellishment."
C. I went on a date with the HR guy. I got him drunk on greyhounds and made him promise to put a referral on my resume.
D. My college roommate's dad worked there and he totally got me in.

6. I did not work as which of the following while I lived in Australia:

A. A waitress.
B. A maid.
C. A writer.
D. A nanny.

7. My new place of employment has offices in 24 countries around the globe. Paris! Singapore! Bangkok! Oddly, they're headquartered in:

A. Perth, where I tried desperately to get a real job for a year, but couldn't, so I moved home.
B. Tokyo, Japan, where my ex, Josh, moved, causing us to break up.
C. West Dorp, Holland, where my ancestors moved to America from 2 generations ago.
D. Warsaw, Indiana, an hour away from my parent's house.

8. I've already had a new-job anxiety dream. In it:

A. My boss was our dipshit president, GWB.
B. I was told I could only really have the job if I passed an algebra test administered by my creep-tastic high school math teacher, Mr. Kaylor.
C. I had on no pants.
D. I got to work only to find out that my entire job consisted of a lifetime of filing. That's it. Forever.

9. At one of my jobs, I met:

A. Scott Baio.
B. Martina Navratialova.
C. Everclear, the whole band.
D. Ha Jin.

10. And I didn't even get in trouble! Which one of the following is true:

A. My co-workers and I used to rig up the drinking fountains to beer kegs. Whoop!
B. I accidentally bought my boss a ticket to Portland, Maine instead of Portland, Oregon. Nonrefundable.
C. I dropped my laptop in a swimming pool.
D. I lied and said I was stuck for 3 days in Switzerland because of a snow storm and my flight was delayed. Really, I was partying my ass off.

*Not while I was working with them, people. I'm not that stupid.

No more double fluffy mocha caramel espresso java java latte macchiatos for me.

I cannot sleep but I am so very tired. It is 3:54 a.m. I REALLY want to be asleep right now and it is not happening. I tried reading some really boring stuff, then praying the rosary. I’m usually out by the third set of Hail Mary’s, but no. I made it through the whole thing tonight. Minnesota winter skies glow orange in my skylights and it’s too bright in here and there is no Benadryl in my drawer and does my old roommate Molly still have my red scarf? What about the giant jar of Costco pickles, does she still have that?

I’m going to call Josh in Japan and Dan in Oz and if they’re not around, I shall start reading the dictionary. Josh might make me laugh too hard, then I will really be awake, but Dan might do the trick. If I can get him to talk about cricket, maybe give me a 10 minute play-by-play, I will be in good shape.

Bullseye

Immediately upon entering T@rget Headquarters for a job interview, one is faced with a long, tall escalator, as though one may be on the long trip to heaven, should the trip to heaven start with the scent of Starbucks triple mocha lattes and end with a dozen security guards the size of The Fridge who have wire curled around each ear, presumably to communicate with whomever will drag you back down, down, down the freezing metal tube to the cold Minneapolis streets should you not give adequate reason to be Checked In.

There is a vase of tropical flowers at the summit, with pointy, angry, fur-tipped pussy willows that thrust upward like claws that, if they could talk, would scream “Haw haw haw! Now I’ve got you, my pretty!”

To get past the escalator, one must choose a lane: the lane for T@rget “family members” or the one for “guests.” “Family members” go through what looks a bit like airport security. There is much scanning and beeping, and clenching of Starbuck's cups and rolling of luggage. No joke: some of them must be carrying product samples, but a good deal of them are rolling with actual suitcases like they're going to stay for a week or two.

I chose the guest lane.

"Why are you here?" The Fridge said, deadpan, no eye contact.

I said I’m here for an interview in room 617, but that was not enough.

"With whom? At what time? For what position?"

"I don’t know. The temp agency sent me. Room 617, man."

His forehead scrunched and he looked at me like a kid who was suppose to know that that means I knew I was in trouble for something I now knew we both knew I did wrong.

"What?" I said.

"Your appointment was at 3:00,"The Fridge said. It was 3:17.

"No, it wasn’t," I said. "I don’t want this damn job anyway. You people freak me out, and I’m not afraid of you." Okay, I didn’t say that last part, but I really wanted to.

"It was at 3, he said." He picked his teeth, like he just polished off the girl who interviewed at 2:30.

"No, you’re wrong, I said. It’s at 3:30. In 10 minutes. If you could just let them know I’m here."

He handed me a badge. I sat on the couch embroidered with bullseye logos. The coffee tables, too, were also bullseye shapes. It all was. Everywhere.

I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be in any corporate office ever again, and there I was, interviewing for an admin position. My heart wasn’t in it. It never will be. For a long time, I thought if I tried hard enough, I could make my heart be okay with fucked up places like this. I know now that that will never be. Yet! Here I was. Here I was, in the lobby, ten little T@rget logos imprinting themselves onto my butt.

Do not despair: I won’t take the job. I have another offer coming down the pipe, and I’m only here for a backup, Just In Case of Financial Emergency.

Now it was 3:45, and no one had collected me for my interview. The Fridge headed toward the T@rget Café and returned with a gallon-size T@rget Soda in a T@rget branded up. When he walked, a mass of keys big enough to be the morning star on a medieval ball and chain bounced on his rock-hard thigh. The Fridge smiled at me, and nodded. I imagine, if I got in, this man has been trained to throw himself in front of a speeding train to save me. After all, I would be in charge of one of the 79 Vice President’s Blackberry.

A gaggle of chicks scanned their cards and dragged their luggage past me, and I swear, 9 of them were streaked-blondes with knee-high black boots pointy enough to pierce one’s coal-black heart. I saw that most of them had similar hair highlights as me. I became very afraid. FINE. It’s true. I have the exact same Goddamn hairdo. I could be one of them. With only 80% more morphing, I, too, could, gulp, fit in here. I wanted to run, but it was too late.

I have a confession: I dated one of them. The men, I mean. Yes, yes, very briefly when I first moved here. I’ll call him by the first two letters of his last name: Ew.

Ew was dashing. On our first date, he pulled up to Zeno in Uptown in a 2005 Jetta (it was 2004) and a three piece suit, just after work. He had that hair thing going on—the one where guys look like they tried to open the bathroom stall door with their forehead? He was gorgeous, romantic, attentive. He told me he didn’t vote because nothing mattered except music and… shit, I don’t remember. Then… suddenly he seemed so metro. He had a suspicious disinterest in boobs. Then, he revealed his serious obsession with New Kids on the Block (I’m not exaggerating. Kate? Kate was a witness. She can back me. Once Ew requested “Hangin’ Tough” at the Wild Onion and flailed about the dance floor alone while we watched, aghast. Carson Kressley would’ve been proud.). Then this one time, we were walking through the MF skyway and he said “Oh, that pink purse is awesome! I wish I’d been born a girl!,” which sent him straight from Questionable Sexual Orientation-ville into Questionable-Sex ville, and onward into increasingly distant history.

I thought I saw him coming through the skyway now. I buried my face in my Creative Process book. I had to know, so I looked up. Oh, thank Christ. Not Ew, but a guy who looked like Ew. Then another guy who looked like Ew. Then another. And another. And OMG—except for The Dozen Fridges, they ALL looked like Ew. Ew! Ew! Ew!

My generalizations were disproved immediately. “Cavu? I’m Turtle.” My interviewer was old and balding with gray teeth. He looked like The Turtle (The one Samantha dated?) on Sex and the City. He didn't look plastic and probably did not get manicures. Despite the fact that he was in a t-shirt that said “Welcome Home” on the back, with the two “o”’s the shape of the bullseye logo, I liked him immediately.

He led me back to a conference room. Everything one would need is here: a branded café, a gourmet coffee shop, a gym with showers.

I asked Turtle what department the job was in, and what they did, and what he did. “Well, we’re somewhere between IT and business unit managers, the BUMs, and we’re kind of the liaison group that takes care of the tracking of data and scheduling for things, you know, executives and, well, business and so forth.”

And?

“You wouldn’t really understand unless you’re familiar with the systematic organizational development hierarchical demographical flow-chart of our corporation. Do you have any experience with Microsoft products?”

This is how the interview went.

Then, “Great, well, we hope to add you to our team. Is $40,000 enough to start out?”

Okay, the last part isn’t a direct quote, but the job is basically doing NOTHING and it is for far too much money considering the tasks at hand.

Later, I stood under the bus stop heat lamp reading Creative Process until my bus came. Eunice, my recruiter called. “Are you still interested?”

“I’m considering a few offers,” I said. I am. I’m considering working for a company that eases human pain and suffering and feels really right and good. I should have an offer from them soon. “But you can call me and let me know what they have to offer,” I say, sincerely. I’d really like to know what on God’s green Earth they think they actually have to offer. If they come up with anything, I’ll let you know.

This Just in from My Fucked Up Hometown

My parentals have lived in a small Indiana town for about 6 billion years now. It’s rather conservative. For example, my mother’s tai chi class got boycotted because the locals thought it was satanic. Even after that, the townies never cease to amaze me.

Madre is the arts administrator, in charge of all things artsy from little kids ballet classes to theatre to painting classes to the annual Christmas tree decorating contest. Most weekends, my dad drives busloads of artistically deprived people out to cities that actually have real art.

So: My mom organized a very cool historical architecture expert to come give a talk about our amazing county courthouse and all the gargoyles and green faces and very cool designs therein. A fellow who is new to town came to the talk—we’ll call him Jason. Jason, 25, just moved to BackAsswards because he married a local woman he met in college. Jason and his young wife are currently shopping for a house.

Jason is into photography. You know, as a hobby. A creative pursuit. So, after the gargoyle expert gave his talk, Jason was fascinated, and he returned to the county courthouse with his camera to photograph the artwork. That’s all, He was just milling about outside shooting photographs of gargoyles and buttresses and stuff.

SIX PEOPLE CALLED THE POLICE.

While Jason comes from, like, Colombus, Ohio or something, he is of Italian heritage. People called the cops saying a dark haired man who might be a terrorist was taking photographs of the courthouse because he might be plotting to blow up the lone government building Paranoid, Indiana. Six separate instances of this frantic phone call, my friends.

Jason was ambushed by screaming sirens and bored cops and taken in for questioning. I imagine Jason in a serious discussion with his lovely wife about moving far, far away right this very minute.

I would like to officially nominate the members of my hometown for the American Terrorist and Buckeyes and Anyone Who Doesn't Look Like Them Protection Committee because they do such a thorough job of protecting their territory from invasion by both terrorists and by 25 year-old photographers from Ohio. I’d also like to nominate them for the Biggest, Dumbest, most Paranoid, Close-Minded, Irrational-Fear Mongering, Narrow, Judgmental Freaks award, because (with a handful of exceptions) they’re a heap of Bush-loving morons.

Kookaburras are really loud birds.

They lived in the tree outside my window in Perth. They sound like this.