Wooooo Girls

Two male colleagues, one who's known me well for years, and one who's worked with me for a few weeks recently started conversations with me the same way.

Exhibit A: "Take what you will from this question, but try not to get too excited...."
Exhibit B: "Try not to get too excited, but...."

Hmm. (to their credit, my almost immediate response was heeeeeeeeeeee! So they might have had a point.)

Someone else recently told me that my Facebook profile shot looks fantastic, and that "I'm one of the smiliest people" she knows. Really?

Is that how people see me? Flying off the handle with cheering at the happy life news of colleagues?

Should I be renting a hummer now?

Or is this all more irrefutable evidence of my long-held claim??

I shoulda been a cheerleader, man. It's my calling.

Dudes.

I'm exhausted.

In a way that's hard to explain, the depths of the exhaustion. So much so that today's parking ticket almost made me cry, right there on the sidewalk beside yet another unsuccessfully plugged meter. But hopefully, the teeth will come soon, and transit strike will end, Christmas will be celebrated, the First Ministers' Meeting will happen in January, they'll think I'm doing a good job at the new work, and we'll all sleep better for it.

And also? Just a few lessons from a recent Friday night out.

First: Late night shopping without kids IS as fun as you remember it was. Especially if you're with a girlfriend.

Second: While shopping wearing the pink sock monkey jammies your mom bought you at Target for the three-generations-in-sock-monkey-jammies photo op, it's much easier to feel sane if you don't look down.

and finally:

If you are a teenage member of the 'style squad' - St. Laurent Centre, I'm looking at you - and you're tempted to treat adults wearing sock monkey jammies like crap, please remember that there's a much greater chance that adults will write to your boss to complain about your behaviour. Just sayin'.

hypochondria, explained

The thing about fibromyalgia is that it's got weird, wildly variable, traveling symptoms. Such that one day, you're fine. Miss some sleep, get a head cold, and you can't figure out why your hip hurts so, or your pinky finger is completely numb.

Anxiety? check. Short attention span? yup. Light hurts your eyes and vision blurry? uh-huh. Grouchy tummy? oh, yeah.

And there are occasionally conversations like this:

"Yeah. The [Florida] Keys are pretty terrific. I think we were in Key Biscayne, (of course this was 30 years ago or so - so my info is HARDLY current) but some people had a car and we ended up going to...... oh..... dang. The word..... you know, those places where fishes are?"

Right. Those. places. where. fishes. are. (It's called fibrofog - and also, an aquarium)

Sure, there's stuff I can do: I eat bran every day. Every. Day. I avoid caffeine after 3 to try to sleep heavier. I try to stay active.

I keep my spell check on all the time.

I wear sunglasses and sit with my back to the window in meetings.

The best thing I can do? Figure out how to keep a thesaurus next to me at all times. Oh, and maybe move the baby out of our room.

It might be time.

More lessons in culture shock

Moving from the small office building of oh, somewhere in the hundreds in population to the office complex with somewhere close to twice the population of the town I grew up in is fun.

Really. It's fun. Especially for a people-watcher such as myself.

I've felt the need to create PSAs - for example, aimed at the lady last summer who was sporting the skirt that might have been from a few seasons back. It was apparently higher waisted than when she first bought it, and yet, the slit was in the same place it used to be, only, as you might imagine with the rise in waist, a corresponding, and truly, truly unfortunate rise in slit had happened. We could call that one "Madam, we can see your ass cheeks, or: Please consider boyshorts for the workplace"

Or for the lady with the unusual chunks of colour in her otherwise white hair "I'm not sure that you should let your berry-loving bird friend sit on your head while you watch scary movies"

But the PSA aimed at me? Well, it might be titled "there's a subtle but clear difference between the way ladies who are paid to organize and deliver things and ladies who are paid to be theoretical dress." Huh. Not quite as catchy as the last two. But probably an important one to watch. I mean, I wear boyshorts and don't let birds sit on my head, so I'm probably ok there. But it's a different aesthetic. Like cool boots but no lipgloss. Dresses but no eye shadow.

Sadly, almost a Daphne vs. Velma thing.

I'm doing my best to blend, but old habits die hard. Today, I used my wiles to bend my provincial colleague to my will and sign an MOU he had been stalling on.

Do you think he'll respect me tomorrow?