Shoelaces for Josie

What’s that saying…everything is so much bigger in Texas?  I’ve never been to Texas but I will tell you one place where everything is so much bigger: Division I.

I was walking down the hall the other day and out of this room pours the football team. THE football team. I was - whoa.  I was short. Midgety. No, I was a hobbit minus the hairy feet. They were so tall and so huge and there were so many of them!  One of them could have accidentally stepped on me and no one would have noticed.

You want to know what else is big?  The campus. Somebody came into the sports info office the other day looking for the “athletics” office. Excuse me? You are in the athletics complex.  There are three buildings hooked together and that houses just the official university athletic programs. That doesn’t include recreation areas or administration for the regular Joe Student. When I was back at the pond, the athletics office was one place. Division I you’ve got media relations, marketing, athletics office, business athletics, athletic foundations, need I go on? I’m not even going to delve into the campus itself. I have no idea where anything is. I know where the football stadium is and that super huge awesome press box. I know where the baseball field is (thanks Nick - I still love baseball - I scoped it out first thing!). And the track of course. But anything not related to athletics? Don’t ask me. Number one, I don’t know where it’s at. Number two, I don’t care.

The coverage is big. Fall football camp - our back conference room was filled with reporters for days, furiously tapping out day-by-day recounts of what was happening on the practice field. Men’s basketball players = tall. Women’s basketball players = not short. Volleyball players = if short, not playing except to dig up the back row. It’s insane. It’s awesome. It’s not me. Why?  Because I’m short and small-town.

I’m trying to think what else is big around here besides the hills. Oh - that truck I saw this morning. No lie, the bottom of the passenger door was at my shoulder height. Huge wheels. HUGE! But who cares. You know what they say about guys who drive huge trucks like that….yeah. Very tiny items - such as self-esteem.

Oh. Big budget too. But that doesn’t affect me at all because I sure never see any of it.

Sometimes you just have to be serious. Sometimes there are things that need to be said and sometimes it’s not the latest joke or the hippest conversation about the most recent fashion. Sometimes serious things need to be addressed and maybe these things aren’t serious to you but they’re serious to me and since this is my blog - well - you get the point.

Happiness. There is a topic not many people bring up. Why? Because of the answer that might be said. It’s all well and good to ask someone if they’re happy but what if they say no? What then? I was thinking last night about one of my good friends. He’s 23 and has…2 kids? - maybe 3…maybe a lot he doesn’t know about. He’s engaged now - to a woman who is the mother of none of his kids. That sounds judgemental to you but I’m not judging him. Besides, if I was, he and I have already had this conversation so it’s not like I’m talking about him behind his back. But last night, I was thinking about him and I wondered if he was happy. I wondered if the place he found himself in 2007 was a place he had remotely considered five years ago on his high school graduation day. I’m going to guess that is a big fat resounding no.

A lot of the people I graduated from college with ended up in a place we all said we’d never end up. Is that a bad thing? I don’t know. No. Not really but I’m going to guess a number of them aren’t super excited about having to eat their words and live in the BV Ghetto. And I wonder - are they where they pictured themselves three months ago when we walked across the blue plush stage and shook Freddie Short-Shorts’ hand and smiled fakely for the camera? Are they happy?

My brother - he’s the best guy I have ever known and am likely ever to know. No wonder I’m single. When the gem of the male world is related to you, there just isn’t much hope. He lives in the house where we grew up and he farms. Is that what he wanted? Knowing my bro, he could have possibly self-obligated himself into doing what he is doing but no one will ever know because if he did, he’ll carry it with him to his grave. But is he happy? Out of all the scenarios I gave, he might be the only one who could answer yes.

I’ve talked a lot about other people so it’s only fair that I talk about myself too. I moved 1500 miles away from everything I had ever known and loved. I packed my car with stuff - some of it completely pointless I have now discovered - and picked an apartment and a stupid roommate from half a country away. I committed to a job at a place I had never seen and to work with people I had never met. I came to a state I had never been to and a town I’d never heard of. Is this where I pictured myself three months ago? No. Am I happy? I don’t know. I don’t wake up each morning overflowing with happiness. I don’t come home from work each night ready to beat the living crap out of myself with one of my stupid roommate’s stupid little knick-knacky house decorating things. I’m grey right now. I’m so grey it’s a little scary - and very blah.

So happiness. What the hell is it? You know - I’m learning. I’m learning it’s a choice. Nick - my very good friend with ALS - taught me that. I learned the lesson. I’m reliving the learning process now. Because I’m looking back at what I had at the Pond and I miss it. I realize that I loved parts of it, a lot more parts of it than I realized or could see while I was there. I don’t want to forever spend my life looking back at the places I used to be in my life and realize after the fact how much I loved them. I want to be happy in them now. And that is a choice. If Nick can wake up each morning still able to laugh and to smile and to be happy - not that there aren’t bad times - bad times are a fact of life and if you’re going to live it then you have to deal with it - but if he can be happy in the midst of dying then I should be happy in the midst of living.

I’m still working on how to make that become a real and tangible thing I carry with me every day - the choice to be happy. I think it’s a different process for everyone. It’s not a one-size-fits-all program. It’s an individualized step-by-step process. I used to think I was pretty far along. Now maybe I’m back on Step 1, or maybe even Step 3 or 4, but the point is that I’m on a step. I hope you are too. I know Nick is.

I just ate a whole package of crackers. Well, not quite. I have four left but they will be gone momentarily. What self-respecting person eats a whole package of crackers at once? Whatever. My head hurts so I’m going to let it slide this time.

I think deep-down inside I’m a small town girl. Actually it might not be so deep; it might be right on the surface. I went to the bank today - I just opened an account at Bank of America a few weeks ago - and I was not impressed. For the second time. And it was only the second time I had been in there. I realize it’s a big corporate chain bank and that my few pennies I rub together mean diddly jack to them. But they mean something to me.

I go in there and need to deposit some of my pennies.  I wait in line forever because only one cashier was working. Finally another decidedly unhappy-with-life woman opens another teller window. I guess I’m not used to filling out my own deposit slips - it seems to me it would be so much easier and faster for her to do it. What is she getting paid for anyway? She spends the whole day being ticked off and watching other people struggle to add up how much their checks total. Dumb. Bad service. Inhospitable wenches. I like that - a bank wench.

Something like that never would have happened at my old bank with just a few locations in the complete middle of nowhere. I wasn’t rich back then either but they treated me like my life was worth something. It was kinda nice, ya know?

The whole point of opening up an account with Bank of America was so I wouldn’t have to open up a new account every time I moved. (Apparently I’m planning on a lot of that happening over the next few years….) Now I am not so sure. After one year, I start getting charged a monthly fee if I don’t utilize direct deposit. I think when that times comes, I’m just going to stuff my pile of pennies into a burlap sack and take them to a bank more my style.

Wow. That whole package of crackers is having a lot to say now and they are not happy.

I have good news. I now have a flippin’ internet connection at home. I may not have a place to sit (other than this awesome camp chair - you know, the kind you sit around the fire to roast marshmallows…or to go tailgating with), and I may not have a broom to clean up after the other people in this apartment, and I may not have a whole lot of food but who cares? I’ve got the internet, yo. Which means I can post cute little posties on my blog at all hours of the day and night when I’m not eating the food I don’t have and not cleaning with the broom I don’t own.

You know, the other day I was sitting at work. Odd, I know. But I was sitting at work, running the scoreboard for a volleyball tourney. I’m sitting there, doing my thing, trying not to mess up when this guy I know - from here on he shall be referred to as Marketing Boy - came up to me. We’ve talked a few times, whatever, no big deal. So he comes up and procedes to charm the warm fuzzies right out of me with this statement:

“Hey. Why do ya look so mad?”

Wow. Blown away. Sign me up for whatever you’ve got, Marketing Boy.

I didn’t even look at him. I just told him I was focusing on my job *hint, hint.*

He didn’t get it right away. Five minutes of awkward, focused silence later, he got up and mumbled something about letting me focus on my work. Thanks pal. Sure appreciate it.

I guess he wasn’t ready to give up so easily though because before he walked away he leaned back over and asked, “Oh - do you want an M&M?”

Seriously?  Seriously…I politely declined.

To top it all off, there was a guy sitting on my other side and the whole time Marketing Boy was - was - hitting? on me - he kept looking over watching the train wreck Marketing Boy was producing. I could see it written all over his face: this guy needs help with picking up women.

I’m inclined to agree.

Oh I am really frustrated and ticked off now. I had a blog written. I was posting it. And then the Internet funked out and said my page couldn’t be displayed. Of all the blasted things, this Internet has been a real Debbie Downer lately. How am I supposed to keep up with all my dedicated fans (of which I can’t even track anymore because my reader-tracker has also funked out) and keep posting awesome blogs if my Internet is a pile of poo?

Anyway. I had a fun and great blog and now I’m posting this just to spite the Internet for being so dumb and whorish.

The short version of what was the longer and funnier version goes something as follows: cleaning the sorority house. I tried to find it and I couldn’t so I went to my other work instead. The lady I was to work for sent me an email from her phone and, struck by guilt and worthlessness, I walked to said sorority house to clean. I found it this time (it’s so much easier to find stuff while walking than driving) and I spent the next hour surrounded by 30 skinny bitty blondes who talked with too much air in their voices and too many head flips. Ugh. Sororities aren’t high on my likeable list.

That’s basically it. Not funny the second time, is it? No. It’s not. And I’m sad about that but I can’t really do much about it right now.

Speaking of awesome, I saw a girl walking down the street last night with a shirt that said this:

Brains not bombs.

It rained today. Finally. I’ve been here three weeks and today was the first drop of rain I’ve seen. I’m a rain-type of girl. I don’t know what the says about me as a person but I’ve decided it’s really not necessary to look into it too deeply.  I like rain. End of story.

I’m currently looking into taking a short trip this winter - maybe up into Alaska or Canada. Did you know every resort/guided tour/trip package requires you to have at least two people in your group?  Every website I looked at listed a minimum of two people. So there isn’t any room for single people?  Is that what society is trying to impress upon us? They should just skip the whole “minimum of blah-blah and blah” and cut right to the chase: “No Losers Allowed.” Now I’m not throwing a pity party. I actually am excited about going by myself (if I can find a place that doesn’t require me to have someone attached to my hip). I want to go by myself. By the time this winter rolls around, I’m pretty sure I’m going to need a little R&R with no one but little ole me to worry about. Who wouldn’t want that?  Apparantly a lot of people or I wouldn’t be struggling with these resorts’ ridiculous rules.

In other news, I overheard myself talking to my shoes today. I stopped myself in mid-sentence and asked myself if I knew how ridiculous I was being. I answered in the affirmative. Uhm. Yeah. How ’bout that weather? Gotta love the rain.

There are certain things that go along with being a decent person that I don’t like. I consider myself a pretty decent person a lot of the time. I’m not a great person, I’m not a perfect person. I do a lot of things wrong and I sometimes am selfish. But as far as contributing to the human race in a positive manner - at least not harming it and being a detriment to society - I consider myself to be pretty a-o-kay.

There are a lot of rules that go hand in hand with being a decent person and one of those is doing what you say you’re going to do when you said you were going to do it. That means even those promises wrung out of you under times of duress. Or when you were just pulled from the depths of slumber. Or when you just consumed three Mt. Dew’s and the caffeine high has temporarily made you feel able to take on any task thrown at you.

I told a lady I would meet her at a house to help her clean it tonight. I don’t want to do it. I know I’ve been looking for a job but now that the opportunity is here, I don’t want to do it. Oh, did I mention it’s a sorority house? Yeah, that might have something to do with the reluctance factor.  I’ve been debating off and on all day on whether I should call this lady and tell her something came up and I can’t make it. The problem is, nothing came up. Nothing ever does. My life is a boring flat prairie. So then I would be lying on top of backing out on a commitment. Seriously?

So long story short, I’m probably still going to go. No, no probably. I will be going to this sorority house and I’m going to clean it. That’s the decent human part of me. The non-decent part is that I probably won’t pretend to like it. If I’m not going to lie to get out of it then I’m not going to lie while I’m in the middle of it either.

So my first all-staff meeting has come and gone and I’m still here to tell about it. I’ve never been a big fan of huge staff meetings, meetings where the entire department gathers in one place to hold hands and proclaim the greatness of the institution that owns them. It’s like one long pep rally where the flow of positive talk and cheesy phrases never stops. Put like that, it’s no wonder there isn’t a long line of people clamoring to be signed up.

There really isn’t any point in a room full of 150 people getting up and introducing themselves. It benefits newbies such as myself not at all. I’m not going to remember 149 names and faces, especially not in a shadowed auditorium. Ah well, I will forever be asking my fellow staff members their names and they will need to introduce themselves again anyway. I think it was a wasted hour of introductions. The whole meeting was pretty pointless.

Here follows my favorite and quite true meeting quotes:

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”

“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.”

And my favorite (albiet a little vulgar) - “Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot masturbate.”

I know - highly inappropriate.

I’m taking a crossword puzzle to my next meeting. Oh wait, that’s tomorrow morning.

There are some things a person should never forget. Things like the ABC’s, the pledge of allegiance, your PIN number for your bank card and where your grandmother is buried. Another item to be listed in that category is how to answer knock-knock jokes.

As my crappy foreshadowing may have clued you into already, I was told a knock-knock joke today and I forgot how to answer it. My decension into embarrassment went something like this.

“Knock, knock.” says EO.

“Who’s there?” says I.

At this point it gets a little confusing. I thought she said “who” with which I responded to “Who….who?” questioning and confusion dripping from my words as my useless brain was quickly scrambling to try and remember the proper protocol in answering knock-knock jokes.

They don’t prepare you for situations like those in college. They don’t tell you how it really works in the world of business and they certainly don’t pop-quiz you on the appropriate responses in Jokes 101. Oh well, it’s not like this is the first time I’ve discovered my college education was a farce.

Apparently she said “boo” and I’m in need of a hearing aide as well as the latest text on Knock-Knock Jokes for Dummies.

Some times, one just is not full of words. Some times, there doesn’t need to be words. Personally, I’m a fan of those times. It seems I am surrounded by people who think they have a lot to say and therefore they speak a lot. In all reality, they don’t have anything worth while to waste my time with.

Yes, I am aware I just used a whole paragraph in speaking jibberish about how others waste my time by using a lot of words to say nothing. That’s the point of blogging, though, because the receiver has the option to read or not to read. Rarely does one have the option of avoiding the weekly office meeting where the exact same thing goes on for hours.

In other news, the end of free parking was last Friday which means today I walked to work. I kept telling myself it wouldn’t be bad, that it would be a great way to start my Monday morning, that the refreshing jaunt would shed some of the weekend weight. I believed it until my mp3 player died 12 steps outside my door. I left my headphones in anyway. It makes the people driving by think that I have a purpose in life which is an added bonus.

In other unrelated useless information, I was having a conversation with a good friend when she began telling me a story about a person. I interrupted her and said the following.

“Joey…Joey - that name sure sounds familiar, I think you’ve mentioned him before. *Pause* *Longer pause* Oh wait, never mind, I was thinking of Full House.”

Gotta love the days where you have little to say because on the days that you think you do have a lot to say are the days stupid falls out of your mouth each time you open it.