While the bosses and supervisor are away....

How I'm justifying my commute today:

• playing intricate game with self involving magnetic ring and bobby pin
• changing my desktop
• watching "Cosmos" screensaver in awe
• measuring my attention blindness (count how many times the white team passes the ball. Then watch again, only this time watch the back team, but don't count.)
• convincing office mates to try vegetable protein sausage
• cleaning out desk drawers
• arranging books
• posting vegan recipes
  
• sucking you in and wasting your time by blogging about how I waste my time
  

What not to say

Things not to say to your new co-worker when she announces that her cat has just passed away:

• "Well at least you didn't have to put her down."
• "Feline HIV? Wow. How did she catch that? I thought that just affected the homo cats."
  
• "When my cat dies, I just won't be able to handle it. I'll like, have to take a week off from work. In fact, that's partly why I adopted a dog!"
• "I know how you feel. The guy that used to sit at that desk just died. Maybe it's cursed!"
  
• Guilty silence while watching own youtube video of own healthy, living cat

I'm guilty of at least 3 of the above. No I won't tell you which ones, you just have to guess.

That's digusting. Let's blog about it!

I actually did what I said I was going to do and started a gross food blog.

Click here to be grossed out.

Recipes welcome, gross or non-gross.

The website of the blog, and perhaps in the future to be an all recipes site, is www.therecipeforfailure.com

The Pancake Wall

The Pancake Wall

I'm having a really tough time getting a handle on why people do the things that they do. Why they hurt each other so badly. Why they lie, and betray trust. Why they take an honor like knowing a person and being in their life and throw it away. Because they can?

I seriously don't understand this place. I feel like Morgan Freeman in Seven.
Only I don't picture myself suddenly caring again because Brad Pitt finds Gwenyth's head in a box. I picture myself impaling myself on my metronome.

I try to be a good person. I try to not turn bitter and hard and mean just because I walk around 90% of the time feeling lonely and betrayed and not understanding anything. I try to think, What Would Jesus Do? What should any decent human being do? I think Jesus because I think (outside the question of whether or not he was God incarnate, whether or not he had sex or rose again, etc etc etc) he was an amazing person with a lot of important stuff to say, and I like what he had to say. It comes naturally to me and makes sense to me. Unfortunately, this place, I feel, is no place to apply those things, and that feels sometimes like it's ripping my soul apart.

What is the point of keeping yourself morally in check if it a) gets you brutally betrayed and b) doesn't help anything? All it does is make me that much more sensitive and aware of the wrong in the world. Maybe I need to have a thicker skin, maybe I need to accept that people lie, people cheat, people treat you like you're worse than an enemy when you try to love them. They will act like you don't exist, without warning. They will judge you and talk about you, they want what you have and they will do anything to steal it from you. They will think you are a bitch because you are pretty. They will pretend to be your friend while they plot your demise so they can make out with the person you are dating. They will at first love you and then hate you, over and over, and you don't know why.

They will scream at you and treat you like crap, and then blame you for being a bad friend. They will idle in their car in their parking spot and make you wait for ten minutes, until finally they wave you away, and then when you drive past them, they will leave their parking spot, simply because they don't want you to have it - they want to hurt you and be mean to you. They will try to pass you and run you off the road because you are not going 80 in the slowest lane of the freeway. They will be a bitch to you when you drop a glass jar in the entryway of your building. They will move in next door and tell you they feel led to love their neighbors, but they will never invite you over, never accept your invitations to come over, and remain aloof and pretentious. They will make you believe that your love is worth nothing, and neither are you.

Here is where I look at the self-help books that my self and other well-meaning individuals have given me and just shake my head, because all the self-help and philosophy in the world is not going to make this horrible ache go away. Reading Boundaries and If The Buddha Got Stuck is not going to fix this.Perspective doesn't make people nicer. I'm kind of tired of taking responsibility for myself and acting like that makes the wrongs others have done to me all better.

After a cumulative 15 months of enduring and witnessing some pretty appalling human behavior, I've hit the wall. It's like when you're eating pancakes, doo doo doo, and then suddenly you hit The Wall and you have to put your fork down and feel like you're going to barf down the front of your shirt.

I totally feel like putting my fork down this week.

*************************

Update

Thanks, all, for your comments. This wasn't supposed to sound accusatory and it wasn't a plea for sympathy... I appreciate the nice words, and chances are if you read other people's blogs, you're not a jerk. This isn't a retraction, however - I was venting feelings, and we all know feelings come and go... and there is still 100% truth to me in what I wrote.

However, life isn't stagnant, and truths are not always absolute, and a little Blondie on the way home (CD courtesy of my recently deceased very nice co-worker) and a plate of apple turnovers left in front of my door by my 80 year old neighbor (his response to my plate of brownies and pasta salad), and some more journaling listing all the people who are kind to me in my life has been a nice way to pass the evening.

So if anyone wants to come over for some turnovers, I think I could lift my veil of existential malaise for an evening. I definitely can't eat all these by myself....

Professional Life

My nice, gentle, sweet co-worker passed away last night from cancer, and rather than have the office pariah rummaging through his desk, I've insisted that I be the one to clean it out tonight.

This has gotten me thinking about the time when something will happen to me.... I don't want that fat idiot coming around with a box to fill with my:

• bag of croutons, 1/2 full
• 2 skeins of yarn
• 1 pair steel knitting needles
• 1 jar baby food (stage 2, bananas)
• 1 bag sprouted sunflower seeds, 6/8 full
• 1 canister CHAMPION raisins, red, 3/4 gone
• 1 can Trader Joe's Organic vegan black bean soup
• 1 box Near East cous-cous, plain
  
• wacom mouse
  
• medicine pouch containing
  

• vitamin c drops
  
• halls cough drops (honey-lemon)
• Hyland's homeopathic pulsatilla cold tablets
• 
  
• small bottle of hand sanitzer, 3/4 gone
• 4 pads post-its (large, multi-color)
• stapler, tape dispenser, staple-puller
• scissors, ruler, rubber-band ball, paper clips
  
• DVX of BSG season 4.5
  
• USB cord
• hoarded Splenda packets (3)

If anyone wants the job, please let me know, so I can exit my Professional Life with some dignity.