Party On!

I did it. I rocked the MCA Holiday staff party. I boozed, I chatted, I laughed loudly. Ladies and Gentlemen, I danced. I shook my groove thing and had such a fine time doing it that nearly half the staff joined in. I shimmied with my boss, I twisted with the curators, and I boogied with the security guards. I won a calculator in the staff raffle. Most importantly, I solidified a friendship.

It is so rare that I meet a woman who I dig enough to be real friends with: I am extraordinarily picky. Until last night, I had yet to meet a gal in Chicago who fit my specifications. (Squee—you are not included since you stalked me here from Michigan and you know I love you!) If I had one, my personal ad would have gone accordingly:

WANTED

Darkly funny, bookworm/goofball seeks like-minded feminists to enjoy movies, concerts, museums, rollerblading, zoo-going, bakery frequenting, and sangria slurping. Ladies whose opinions extend further than “who’s hot and who’s not” are preferred. 

IMPORTANT: Applicant must have enough brains and self-respect to discuss something other than diets, the men they associate themselves with, and self-loathing. Charisma and chemistry will be heavily considered at time of application. Salon Divas, Mall Princesses, Bitches, Snobs, Petty Airheads, and Drama Queens need not apply.

I do not settle for anything less, which I hope makes the girl friends I already have feel like the rock (although I suspect they already feel that way 99% of the time). However, my pickyness does make my circle of friends relatively small. But I am happy to say that I added another member to it at the MCA holiday party.

I knew Caitlin and I were going to be friends when we were talking about the complimentary month long membership to a super fancy gym that was offered to some of the MCA staffers from one of our corporate partners for the holidays. Since we both have been taking advantage of the privilege, I started chatting with her about it at the party. To my delight, we both had the exact same answer that seemed to stun the personal trainer at the gym when he smugly asked, “What are your work out goals?” Although we were asked at different times, completely unaware of eachother’s answer, we both confidently told the trainer, “I just want to keep winter gloom at bay.” What about weight loss? A six pack? Rippling biceps? Steely buns? I concur wholeheartedly with Caitlin when she said, “I think I look great—there is nothing wrong with me. I just wanted to chill out in a fancy gym!”

Tonight I have the Writing Center holiday party from 4-6 and the College Summit Party from 6-9. After that, Shaun and I will be heading over to whatever bar his holiday-party after-party will be at. Who needs a salary, sick days, and benefits that come with some lucky full time jobs when you can have three part time jobs to comprise a full time schedule? More jobs=more parties. And I do like to boogie.

__________________________________________________________________

What is bringing you holiday joy this year?

It’s a Beautiful Sight/I’m Happy Tonight

While no daydreams are necessary to keep me enthusiastic about spending at day at my job at the Writing Center, there are days in my other job at the museum when a little daydream is needed to lift my spirits. Sometimes, I just need a little something to see me through the long afternoons of PowerPoint, data entry, invoices, and appointment setting. This really stinks because it is pretty difficult for me to take a moment to daydream properly here.

The first obstacle is my cubicle. The confines of my cube have a way of binding me to reality; I cannot escape.  In this starchy, pre-fabricated environment, my extra long legs push up against the walls. At least once a day my feet get snared in the computer/copier/phone wiring beneath my desk, causing the keyboard wire to dislodge. I spill water on things; people ask what that “that smell” is during lunchtime when I open my little container of homemade dressing and the bitter, acidic, lovely reek of balsamic assails my area of the office for never long enough. In the one drawer I have reserved for my personal items, I keep extra forks next to extra tampons.

Outside of my cube is a narrow hallway. Directly across that hallway is a glass pane that acts as a wall to my boss’ office. From this glass pane, if she so chose, she could watch my every move. Luckily, she has a life and is cool, so she has better things to do that watch me create line charts in Excel. But still, the possibility of getting caught in the act is a major deterrent from any daydreaming endeavor.  

My boss’ window—in full view from my cube—is of the floor to ceiling variety. It overlooks the posh Streeterville apartment high-rise across the street from the museum. Sometimes when my boss is out of the office or at meetings and there is no other danger of getting “caught,” I am able to gaze past her office and out her giant window into the neighboring apartments. Looking into these otherworlds for a few relished moments, my mind dances like Julie Andrews on an Austrian hilltop.
 
In one unit, a woman cleans her windows with vigor; in another a man scratches his balls with a curiously matched ferocity. A wrinkled, shrunken woman with hair the color of coagulated blood holds a chiwawa up to the window and makes him wave his paw at the world below; the dog’s skin hangs loose around his frame. I realize that many purse dogs have skin that looks similar to that of a relaxed human penis, or the soft sag of a dried plum. I contemplate when I first noticed that prunes were now called dried plums. I remember meeting up with an old friend from elementary school named Andy and how he insisted that I now call him Drew. I like Andy better, but I find the name “dried plums” to be a vast improvement. Although my favorite dried fruit of all time is definitely the fig. I wonder why these most delicious of all dried fruits are not more popular than chocolate. I realize I hate boxes of chocolate and I evaluate for a moment if my taste for chocolate has waned over the years. I decide that this is untrue, since I am still a freak for Cadbury Fruit & Nut bars. I spend a few fond moments remembering my freshmen year in college. FX was starting to rerun Buffy the Vampire Slayer 5 nights a week and my best friend Derek and I were on a quest to tape each Buff in chronological order. Before our episode began, we sometimes walked to the campus party store for snacks. I always got a Chunky and a Perrier. He got Sour Patch Kids and soda. I wonder how his teeth are holding up in recent years and I hope they are well. I laugh at a sudden memory of Derek shoveling Peeps into his mouth one Easter time, playfully screaming “CHUBBY BUNNY!” I let out a short laugh at the mental image before shaking my head and getting back to a thick stack of redeemed promotional offers to enter into the database.

This is how my daydreams typically go—a current of associations sweeping me away for a few precious minutes once a week or so. Yesterday I was slugging through an afternoon of attendance analysis and I needed a breather to maintain my sanity. My lovely boss was in a meeting offsite, so my eyes were happy to peel themselves away from the computer screen to gaze out the window and into the lives of those in the apartments across the street—my steadfast portal to sweet daydreams.

For a brief moment I was confused as to why my boss had put white butcher paper up over her windows. Then I realized that the wall of white I was looking at was snow. A beautiful, chilly blizzard.

While looking at snow through windows has some virtues—not freezing to death, for example—it is best viewed directly. Waiting for train home that evening, I became mesmerized with the swirling flakes. I watched them swirl and fly in glow of the headlamps at the subway platform. I was suddenly hit with a forgotten memory of my dad driving me to grandma’s house for Christmas eve. The world was dark all around us and a nasty snow storm was making my speed demon dad drive like a granny. We were comfortably quiet in the warm cab of the truck, concentrating on the snow. The sight of the flakes whooshing up to the windshield and getting swept away cleanly by the wipers mesmerized me; the dance of the flakes in the headlights left me breathless.

Yesterday the blizzard in Chicago lasted late into the night. Looking in the mirror upon my arrival home, I was pleased at the rosy-cheeked, glossy eyed, black lashed beauty staring back at me. I got snuggly in my pajamas and had sweet dreams of being the benevolent queen of Ice World.

Let winter hibernation begin!
___________________________________________________________________________
Does snow make you dreamy?

Dream Life
© The Author, 2005

A wicked, hideous bug is thrashing about inside my gut.

Yesterday my tummy bug hated me so much that I called in sick to work. I slept all day and dreamed of being a rock star.

Shaken to the core with chills and body aches, I went home early from work today. I went to sleep immediately upon my arrival home. I dreamed of getting an “I Tried” sticker from my boss—the same type of sticker you get when you try to donate blood but your piercings are too fresh, or you have visible track marks.

A far cry from rock star dreams.

Since I can’t seem to focus on reading and tonight’s television line up is to lame to even consider (a made for tv movie about Pope John Paul’s life?!?! Oh come on!!!), I thought it might prove entertaining to write about the primary thing that seems to be holding my interest this sickness-fouled week: dreams.


In the weeks before my mom married my step dad, a recurring dream that was to follow me throughout life was born. In the dream I am five years old and my step dad takes me to the place that the board game Candy Land was made after. We hold hands and walk in comfortable silence on the colored squares, shaded by lush trees bearing gummy fruits and skittles. Soon, the forest starts to grow thicker and brambles of licorice begin to knot our path. A shack in the distance comes into focus. “That is where the witch lives,” my step dad says in a playful whisper. I smile, not wanting to let on that I’m sort of scared and unsure as to if he is serious or not. The closer we get to her house, the more I notice that each window of it is radiating a different color. Once we are upon the house, blinding hues of orange, blue, yellow, and pink pour from the windows and bathe the forest in violent light. My step dad opens the door to the house and we step in. To my surprise, there is no color in the house at all—it is dark and drab and dreary. A slide projector whirs in the corner and is clicking through slide after slide of white light, aimed to land on the dingy wall across from it. “See?” He asks me. I shrug, not wanting to let him know that I don’t understand. Looking around at the drab, I am shamefully comforted that all the lights, all the fuss, was all nothing after all.

In the weeks after 9/11 I dreamed that the souls of those who had died were in a traffic jam on their way to Nirvana—too many deaths all at the same time and not enough staff in Nirvana to accommodate. The line spilled from the sky into my dorm room. I could have sworn I saw those who had died lined up, waiting irritated and confused along my cinderblock walls. I woke sobbing for them.

In the weeks before my marriage, I dreamed that I accidentally had sex with my gay best friend. For some reason the person I thought was Shaun had a changeable face—like a mask that morphed. It would start out as Shaun, and then it would turn into Derek and I would panic and throw my sheets off my bed in an angry panic, waking my roommate with stupid sleep talking gibberish. I was so appalled at the situation that I couldn’t even look at my friend the next day. He of course knew why and wouldn’t stop teasing me about it, which made the whole debacle worse.

In the weeks (okay—years) after encountering mutant cockroaches at work, I have dreams that there are exactly two roaches in the bed. I throw the covers off and it takes Shaun a considerably long time to wake me from my delusion and convince me that the bed is bug free.

Sometimes I dream that I am Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I invent my own plot lines to enact. I think I’ll go back to sleep now and see if I can wrangle up a dream where I’m Buffy and get to slay bad things. That always seems to make me feel better. This episode will be called “Buffy Slays the Tummy Bug.”

_____________________________________________________________
What do you dream?


::Random Tangent::
Who read Alice Munro’s short in The New Yorker this week? Holy Moley! I like it when Munro takes a break from penning domestic tales and tackles a warped scenario! I totally dug it. You?