bloody scabs: the new fashion "do"

Last Wednesday, I got home from work, changed out of my work clothes, and set out determinedly on my walk for Sheba's fitness. I didn't realize till halfway into the walk that the shoes I had decided to wear (without socks)were slowly but surely eroding the skin on both of my ankles, as well as the sides of my pinky toes. By the time I got back to my apartment, I was alternating limping/toe stepping like a circus freak and my ankles were openly bleeding. This was bad enough, but since it was so flippin hot last week, I also spent the remainder of the workweek in heels, covering every possible inch of my tender anklemeats with band-aids that refused to stick. This resulted in further gashing the open wounds, and now I look like someone took a butter knife to my heels.

I wish I could wear flip flops to work.

if I could have taken off my skin, I would have

I do not do well in heat. Much like a tender leafling trying to make my way into the forest, I require water, nourishment, and shade to survive. So when I, as I did yesterday, eat only a tiny bowl of rice noodles all day, drink one glass of water, and spend 3+ hours in my car refusing to turn on the air conditioning amid the hot blaze of the afternoon because it "toughens up the constitution", there are bound to be consequences.

Which came in the form of a nice shiny glaze of perspiration running the entire length of my body, collecting in the folds of my abdomen, back of the thighs, and the area between my breasts. Lovely! Good thing I was wearing a dress so I still clung to a shred of my fading womanliness, rooting around in the weeds outside an industrial building in Mountain View and snapping pictures of a potential sale for my boss.

It was over 90 degrees when I got home. Sweet jesus.

What I wanted to have last night:




What I got instead:



If it's this hot again this weekend, you better believe I'm stripping down to my skivvies and parading arount my apartment with an ice pack around my waist.

the joys of motherhood

To everyone who didn't think I would make a very good dog owner...well, this weekend's experiences were probably the foundation for that opinion. So far, I would have to say that I have been fairly patient, and certainly diligent in taking Sheba/Shelby out for walks, bathroom breaks, and general accompaniment. She's suffered through sand, hot asphalt, and tasty lunches where she didn't even get a scrap because I didn't want her to be left behind in my activities.

Now that I'm working farther away, I can't come home for lunch like I used to and take her for walks around the neighborhood to relieve herself. So I'm trying to train her to use puppy pads. Janessa claims that Frances took to the pads immediately, since they're treated with some sort of chemical that supposedly makes the dog want to urinate on top of them. However, Sheba clearly prefers to ignore this scent and instead seems to delight in crapping and pissing anywhere she damn well pleases. Generally, she aims for the front door area, but she has been known to go near the bedroom door, next to the couch, and even (I know it's disgusting) in the bed. I tried leaving her in the bathroom a couple weeks ago, covering half the floor with pads and the other half with her bedding and food dishes, but I quickly discovered the folly of that plan when I came home to find her bedding soaked in the upturned water dish, the puppy pads akimbo, and the contents of my medicine cabinets all over the countertop. The Sheba was displeased.

So now I have resorted to covering as large an area as possible with pee pads in front of the door, and this has been working fairly well, since she already aims for that area as a rule. I try to reward her when she goes where she's supposed to, but since it usually happens when I'm away, it's not a very good positive reinforcement.

Sunday morning I was in the middle of a glorious shower, when Hector runs in to let me know that Sheba pooped on her puppy pad. Hurray!

However.

After laying her turd, Sheba then apparently decided to trample it with her back feet. Trample it, and then race back to Hector in the bedroom to lick his face with joy at her accomplishment. Hector immediately suspected she had been up to the devil's business and then noticed the little brown paw prints all over the bedding, floor, and pretty much the entire living room. So I got to not only impromptu wash Sheba's feces-ridden body during MY shower, I spent the next 5 hours laundering everything that had even the remote possibility of coming in contact with her soiled hind feet. That included renting a carpet cleaner and shampooing the entire apartment, even though I am fairly certain I haven't seen the last of the stains I am going to have to industrially vacuum and shampoo out.

If anything solidifies my resolve to avoid having children until absolutely necessary/accidentally, it is the thought of a tiny human 100 times worse than Sheba.

it's jennifer hour! Today's topic: me!

I finally have female coworkers again, which has been a bit unnerving because for the two years I had gotten used to minimal office gossip and grunts in place of good mornings. I didn't have to worry about asking about the details of vacations, babies, weekends, or the like. Because guys could care less about those things, and unless I had a link to a video clip of Paris Hilton getting banged out by a zonkey, I basically kept to myself.

But after only 4 days in the new office, I have been talked to incessantly, offered to be taken to lunch twice, and I already know the names, ages, and sexes of all the office spawn. It's kinda nice. Today they bought me lunch and we all ate it in the conference room. However, what I thought would be a nice 30-45 minute casual lunch break turned into 3rd degree on the last ten years of my life. Who have I dated, what was my major, how often does my dog use the facilities??? I haven't had to talk that much about myself since I interviewed for the job two years ago, and even then I don't think I revealed as much. We had been eating for an hour when I realized that they were all finished and were staring at me because I still had 3/4 of my massive kung pao chicken combination platter in front of me, since I am a lady and ladies don't talk with food in their mouth. But sweet jesus!

Something I forgot about working with other women: you have to step up your game as far as clothing at the office. I've been getting away with no makeup and pant/sweater combos for a long time now, but no longer. When there are other women to critique your wardrobe choices, you have to be a bit more selective than "whatever doesn't have those nasty shoulder bumps from the hanger". But do I really need an excuse to buy new clothes?

my goodness

I enjoy moving. I love packing things into ill-fitting boxes. I love lugging said boxes across zip codes. I love filling out change of address forms and then praying to the baby jesus that the post office is able to pull it together just long enough to get the mail to the forwarding address I entered on the standard form they must see a thousand times a day. But most of all, I love unpacking and putting everything I used to have into a space about 1/8 the size of the last space I was in.

I just spent the last month moving our office from San Jose to Menlo Park. To add to the stress of figuring out the difference between VoIP and Nortel phone system packages, new software/hardware, new company logos, stationery, and office supplies, the owners were splitting off to create two new companies so I got to do it all twice. I won't go into the details of my slaving away in an empty office for the last 30 days, but suffice it to say, it was hellish. And now I am in my new "office" (read: crawl space surrounded by 8' high cubicle partitions with a sliver of light seeping through the cracks) desperately trying to sync up all my old contacts and failing. Failing miserably. But at least I have time to write, since the internet is pretty much the only thing working correctly over here.

After years of pining over every vehicle remotely nicer than mine on the road, I finally went out and bought myself my very first self-financed vehicle. It's nothing special, but the fact that it is only 4 years old rather than 11 and doesn't look like it's been used in a monster truck rally is a definite plus for me. And everyone loves a teal car, right? I'm not joking, the color is awful, but it's a Nissan Sentra and with my price range, I was pretty damn lucky to get it. You can't just walk into a car dealership anymore and offer sexual favors for new wheels. But you can get a pretty good deal that way.

The downside I've found to moving offices and buying a car at the same time? Your paycheck gets lost in the postal system while almost your entire savings are blown. Result: Momma needs to start turning tricks to feed the pets.