Going through the motions

When I was at my last job, I was perpetually tired and perplexed by that tiredness because the job required so little of me that I had no idea where my energy was going. I needed naps and late mornings on weekends. I slept as late as I could during the week and left as early as possible in the evenings. I wondered how I'd ever function in a job that actually needed me to DO things because where would the energy come from to get it done.

The new job is intense and challenging and good. I actually have to think about my work and I LIKE what I'm doing. Do I know anything about economics? No, but it's fun to learn. Suddenly 7am rolls around and I'm awake. No naps, no late mornings. And my energy is boundless.

Today was one of those days when I was rushing around from place to place, and every five feet a cab would pull out in front of me and drive 20 miles per hour. I was moving fast but everyone else was ssslllllooowwwww. But I'm still excited to go to work tomorrow.

Discovery--if you hurt your back runnning, the doctor gets free with the muscle relaxants. This makes sitting on a heating pad for hours almost worth it.

Respecting the delicate ecology of my delusions

4am--bolt upright in bed. Anxiety. I don't know anything about what my company does--how can I possibly write about it? Do they expect me to know the style guide after only a week? My eyes glaze over when I read about economics--what if I really can't write about it because I'll never understand it?

So much to do for the wedding. And only 6 months to do it in. I want to get it all done *tomorrow* so that I can get back to sleep and not spend the next 6 months having anxiety attacks. I remember this feeling. I remember lying on my old couch, zoned on two Ativans, watching "Angels in America" on HBO and thinking, "Oh my god, I'm turning into Harper."

Scully sat on my feet and somehow I fell back to sleep.

Armani don't make polyester

I want to know exactly when tapered pants came back into vogue. I mean really--whose bright idea was that? It must have been the same person who's behind the whole skinny jeans phenomenon, ie someone with long, thin legs and no hips. "Let's make everybody look pear-shaped!" they said with glee. Yesterday I went to the Gap at lunch to try and find some new work pants. Lo and behold, all I found were skinny jeans and pants with tapered legs. I have issues enough with my lower body--I don't need to be buying clothes (or even being in the position of unknowingly trying on clothes) that exacerbate my hips and thighs any more than necessary. It's totally unfair.

On the wedding front (speaking of things that make me pay attention to my hips), we officially have a place and a date. Mark your calendars: February 24th, here we come. That means we also have...6 months. As Franck said in Father of the Bride, that is not very much time. I need Franck right now. Xanax? MeanG?

Scenes

"Watch out for the 15," she said, smiling as if she was sharing a vital piece of information.

"The what?" I asked.

"The XXXX 15. We're very food oriented here and if you're not careful, you'll gain a good 10 or 15 pounds."

I'm lucky, I thought. My willpower is hanging in the downstairs closet, shrouded in plastic. March isn't that far away.

She wasn't kidding, though. Our group is very food oriented. Today the entire department went to Chinatown for dim sum at lunch. Three of the women are from Hong Kong and their presence made the dim sum experience entirely new. To them, dim sum was a way to visit home. In lovely sing-song accents, they got us seated, chose dishes from the carts with extreme care, making sure everything we ate was traditional Chinese food. Accordingly, the staff brought out dishes that I'd never seen at dim sum before--for example, a brownish concoction that turned out to be tripe. No, I did not have it. But I wasn't grossed out with it on the table. New is good.

Tonight, all I could think of in savasana was "Open Water," that movie from a few years ago about the couple who got left behind on a diving trip and ended up drowning/getting eaten by sharks. I never saw the movie but the trailers still haunt me.

Walking back to my car, I passed the two men who sit on their porch every night listening to Italian opera and 40s boogie woogie. They seem jovial, of a different time. Tongight they waved.

The laundry marauder

...strikes again. She wormed her way in there all on her own.

Postus Interruptus

Pros of the new job: my boss took the whole department to see the 1:15pm showing of "Snakes on a Plane" today. The field trip came complete with plastic snakes, free cab rides and brown paper bags full of nips so people could spike their sodas. Mfn snakes!!

Cons of the new job: the company monitors email and web use, so posts will definitely be fewer and further between.

I am now boycotting the wedding planning. Too many people want too many things and until there's consensus, I prefer to focus on being happy with Lunchboy rather than stressing about things like menu cards.

In between

The theme of the day for me is calm. I feel calm about...everything. Except maybe the new job, which starts on Thursday. I'm a little anxious that I'll get there and they'll discover that I really don't know what I'm talking about and see that hiring me was a huge mistake. That's totally my confidence issues coming to the fore, but in general new jobs are a bit nerve wracking.

We might have found a location. There's one more place we're going to check out tomorrow, but if it doesn't pan out then there's a place that we like a lot and I feel confident in choosing. Plus, the people there totally have their shit together and I have a feeling they'd make sure we have a bang-up wedding.

But yes, other than the fact that Griffin totally scratched my boob on Saturday (my fault for picking her up when I wasn't wearing a shirt), things are very calm. I feel content and grounded and good. I'm a little mystified at feeling this good after the dream I had last night, in which Lunchboy and I were in the World Trade Center when the planes hit and we were trying to get out before the towers collapsed. This is totally rooted in my fear that a plane will hit the Hancock tower (where I will be working as of Thursday), hence the news hiatus I imposed last week after that terror plot was uncovered.

I am running a million errands today and getting shit done. Off to Whole Foods and then to catch up with Bligh and Hendrik, who are in town for the week...

No skeletons, I swear

So the new job requires all incoming employees to go through a background check conducted by Kroll. I used to cover Kroll occasionally when I reported on security issues back in the day. They are big and serious and kind of scary in a silent, stealthy, Men in Black kind of way. Today I got a call from one of the Kroll people saying that they couldn’t get in touch with any of the HR people at one of my old jobs (ironically, the one where I covered security), and did I happen to have my W-2s from 5 years ago on hand? Because, you know, I carry all my W-2s around in my bag for just such an occasion. In fact, I do not have my tax returns from 5 years ago. I’m of the “keep your birthday cards but not your old bank statements” school of thought, so my records only go back 3-4 years. Also, I was not under the impression that I was going through the checking process for government security clearance, which is what this suddenly felt like.

I called the woman back and gave her my old boss’s email address because he’s still with the company. She seemed satisfied with that, but I still got the distinct feeling that she thought I’d done something very, very wrong and was trying to cover it up. Do people really lie on their resumes that often? I’m scrupulously honest about that kind of thing because that’s how I was brought up (and also because I get nauseous just thinking at the kind of humiliation that such lies would cause), so I wasn’t worried going into the background check. But I kind of felt like she expected me to fess up about my pot use in college or something. It’s just a job, lady.

Redundant TMI

Last night in yoga, this semi-heavy woman fell over while working on her handstand. She hit the floor really hard and she was okay, but the first thing she said after everyone rushed over to make sure she was all right was, "Well, that got the flatulence out."

You think?

"Use of prescription sleeping pills is up nearly 50% since 2001, and a report released Monday by Consumers Union of United States Inc., publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, attributes at least part of the increase to a surge in direct-to-consumer advertising of such anti-insomnia medications as Ambien and Lunesta."

I tend to think people aren't sleeping as well because the general anxiety level has skyrocketed since 2001, and there's only so much you can do about anxiety when it's really, really bad.

I say this with confidence today because I'm still groggy from the Rozerem I took last night. Ambien made me forget things, Sonata didn't work, and my doctor refused to give me a trial prescription of Lunesta, so my dad was nice enough to pass along some new stuff. My father, the walking pharmacy.

For the record, Rozerem works like a charm. After weeks of sleeping lightly, intermittently, or not at all, I crashed at 10pm and I slept so hard that I *I didn't wake up* when Lunchboy moved me over to my side of the bed after he turned in. The grogginess I attribute to the fact that I took some Tylenol PM and an Ativan before I saw a Rozerem commercial on TV and remembered that I had some.

Yes, job changes and wedding planning are stressful. Don't judge me.

Recap

The California trip was a complete blast. The weather was spectacular. We saw lots of good friends. Also, lots of mountains, lots of ocean and lots of sea creatures.

SEALS!



OTTERS!



RANDOM FURRY CREATURES!



For some reason, the HBO Family channel in Monterey only showed a picture of Katie Holmes for two days straight. It was a little weird.

Now we’re home and the questions are flying left and right. Here are the only answers I have so far:

1. small
2. March-ish
3. in the Boston area

I will say that several spreadsheets and Powerpoint slides have already been created. The Team Love project has officially begun :)

Celebrity magnet

After I moved to LA in 2003, it took a good three months for me to see a celebrity on the street. Considering how everyone else seemed to see celebrities in the mirror when they got up to brush their teeth in the morning, it was frustrating that I appeared to repel celebrities like a magnet turned the wrong way around. Where I went, the celebrities were not.

Lunchboy, on the other hand, attracted the celebrities like flies. After lunch last Friday, we went to the Santa Monica stairs so I could fulfill my stairs fetish. As we stood at the base of the stairs, I looked up at the people on their way down and recognized a face.

"Look! It's Luke Wilson!!"

In fact, it was Owen Wilson. Hansel in the flesh. And he totally heard me get his name wrong. We managed to get some distant, sweaty pictures of him on the stairs with his trainer (maybe training for Zoolander 2? Wishful thinking?) That's him in the blue shirt, shielding his face from my extremely inconspicuous picture taking.