Overly Verbal

Today, I drowned my cell phone. (That’s not so remarkable, unless you consider that I somehow owned this cell phone since August of 2005 without drowning her before.)

The very first thing I thought, after “Crap, that’s gonna be broke,” was “Sing whatever songs are sung / wind whatever wreath, / for a playmate perished young.”* I couldn’t remember the rest of the poem, couldn’t look it up until just now, because I spent my evening going to Target, buying a new cell phone, spending eleventy hundred minutes speaking with a “customer service representative” at Tracfone so we could transfer my old phone number to my new phone, et cetera, ad nauseam.

But now that I have looked it up, I’m reminded of how nice it is. I really, really love Edna St. Vincent Millay, and one of my favorite gifts of all time is an old, somewhat musty book of her collected poems which is not only beautiful inside, but beautiful outside too, in a way it seems only old books can be.*** Anyway, here it is in its entirety:

Dirge
Boys and girls that held her dear,
Do your weeping now;
All you loved of her lies here.

Brought to earth the arrogant brow,
And the withering tongue
Chastened; do your weeping now.

Sing whatever songs are sung,
Wind whatever wreath,
For a playmate perished young,

For a spirit spent in death.
Boys and girls that held her dear,
All you loved of her lies here.

“And the withering tongue chastened”? Brilliant.

Anyway, not to worry, for the transferring of my old cell phone number to my new cell phone was an unmitigated success. Well, mitigated only by the fact that my entire phone book is missing, which is not such a big deal, as the (aforementioned, if you happen to read the footnotes inline, which I can’t imagine you not doing, because that would be silly) OCD requires my memorizing phone numbers the same way I memorize song lyrics, by which I mean with no conscious effort and sometimes disastrous effect.

The untimely drowning death of my cell phone, however, led me to act rashly, purchase a phone of exactly the same model, furnished by exactly the same cell phone provider I’ve used my entire cell phone owning career. So it still takes me 16 pushes of a button to get an open parenthesis into any given text message. I’m hoping the new phone will allow me to purchase airtime online without speaking with a “customer service representative”, which would be a vast improvement over the old cell phone’s functioning. And the new phone is black, where the old phone was silver, which just makes it that much easier to lose my phone in the interior of my bag. All that being said, however, I would just like to point out that although I’m an idiot, and destroyed my old cell phone in one fell swoop,**** I managed to replace her for the low, low price of $15.74, with a disruption in service of only about six hours. I’d like to see someone else pull that off.

Actually, I wouldn’t. I like you people, and I hope you don’t drown your cell phones. It’s cool to be like me and all, but not every single day.

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* And yes, I did think of it with line breaks and punctuation intact. They don’t call it OCD for nothin’.**

** Actually, that’s not true. The second thing I thought was, “Thank whatever whims of fate prevented my dropping her in the toilet. I do sort of lead a charmed life, don’t I?”

*** Dear boys who are secretly in love with me,

Sorry to ruin this for you, but that whole “buying an old book of Edna St. Vincent Millay poems for Jennifer for her birthday to win her heart forever” only plays once. (And, um, it doesn’t actually play as planned, even if you are a (um, Jewish) English major at Columbia, which the boy in question was, in spades. In fact, it ultimately fails miserably, except I do have fond thoughts of the boy in question occasionally, when I have cause to pull the book off the shelf and look at it.) (Maybe that wasn’t what he was aiming for, though, winning my heart forever. Maybe he just enjoyed having a nice smart girl to talk to, thought he’d buy her a book. Who can tell the vagaries of the human heart?)

Fondly,

Jennifer

**** Yup, that’s the noise she made entering the water: swoop! Then she went “gurgle, gurgle”, then she made some pretty Rorschach test-like images on her screen, then some pink goo oozed out of her battery. All in all, it wasn’t a bad death, really.

I think this whole shutting off your lights for an hour thing is a fine idea. So fine that I think I’ll participate, even though I am traditionally not a joiner.

You should do it too, and not only because you secretly want to be just like me.

Now, I think we can all agree that I have a lot of good ideas.

That being done, move on to viewing this chair, which can be had for the low, low price of 390 pounds (which is like, what, $800?).

Why the hell didn’t I think of that?

Is it legal to pull into the parking lot of an apartment complex in a completely unmarked panel truck, yell something unintelligible through a bullhorn, then open the truck and sell fruit and other foodstuffs to people? I mean, I guess it’s kind of like a farmers market, but I think farmers markets have food safety inspectors and stuff. Anyway, this is the second time this has happened – the first time it was well after dark and I wasn’t keen on getting too close to the truck, so I didn’t know what they were selling. Looked like food from my safe vantage point, but I couldn’t be sure. Today, however, armed only with my keys and my cell phone, I went outside and approached the truck, acting as if I was simply walking through the parking lot, and they’re definitely selling food from an unmarked truck, in my parking lot, and announcing their arrival via bullhorn. Why? Are they going to do this all the time? If I want to call someone, who to call? The FDA? Homeland Security? Even if it is legal, I don’t think it should be. Maybe I should call my Congressperson, or Senator. *

Why the hell can’t I keep track of my passport? It’s not like you can keep your passport in a giant box marked “PASSPORT AND OTHER IMPORTANT IDENTITY-PROVING DOCUMENTS”, because if you do, and someone breaks into your house? That would be bad. Here’s a story – when I moved to New York I put my Social Security card somewhere for safekeeping, but I never could figure out where it was. Luckily, I have a duplicate of my birth certificate, with a seal and everything, so I never actually needed my Social Security card during the time (um, seven or eight years?) it was in a box in storage in California. Never even had to order a new one. I sure did keep it safe. Now, however, I am confident that my passport, my Social Security card, and my birth certificate are in a folder, in my home. Which folder, and where, I would really like to know right about now, on account of I need at least one of those documents, although the other two will do if I can’t find my passport. Actually, I needed them yesterday.

And there are other things I wonder: what the guy on the bus this morning who was angrily muttering to himself (causing me to get up and move so that he would no longer be between me and an exit from the bus that was not a window) was so angry about; and why the only currently available over-the-counter allergy medication that prevents my sneezing also upsets my stomach (to put it politely); and when Molly and Mouse are going to revolt because I persist in coming home later than I did before, when I was still a temp; and how many minutes I have to spend killing ants in my kitchen before I have once and for all murdered every ant in a ten-mile radius of my kitchen.

You know how people praise a “childlike sense of wonder”, as if that’s somehow a good thing? Really, it’s just confusion. That’s not so great, if you think about it, but it does keep one’s mind occupied, during those moments when one’s, say, trying to figure out how to avoid a crazy guy on the bus, or, oh, I don’t know, killing ants?

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* Maybe I should find out who my local representatives are. Nah, I’m busy. (Busy wonderin’.)

(With apologies to Edwin Arlington Robinson and Dylan Thomas.)

I really wish that I could breathe.
I want to have no allergies.
All that I can see are trees.

I prob’ly need more saline spray,
the sneezing brings me to my knees.
I really wish that I could breathe.

For Zyrtec I will gladly pay –
hold on a sec, I’ve gotta sneeze.
All that I can see are trees.

I will not like the month of May.
My winter life is one of ease.
I really wish that I could breathe.

Bright green leaves, pure white blossoms gay;
spring’s nice and all, for birds and bees.
All that I can see are trees.

When you think of me, I beg you pray.
(Buy stock in Kleenex, if you please.)
I really wish that I could breathe.
All that I can see are trees.

(Anyone who is under the impression that the word “breathe” does not actually rhyme with the word “trees” can either keep that impression to themselves or take it up with me, in which case I would like to remind you that I am taking medication the side effects of which include irritability and increased physical activity. Not to mention nosebleeds. Might not want to get in an argument with me right now - it wouldn’t be pretty!)

Dear Vera Wang,

You know your new commercials, for some fancy line you’ve designed exclusively for Kohl’s? They are on my televison all the goddamned time. I like “A Horse With No Name” just fine, but I really think I’d be happier if it wasn’t stuck in my head right now. Are there no other songs that adequately express your aesthetic? If not, could you try to find one? I’ll help, if need be.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter,

Jennifer

I just had occasion to visit iTunes, on account of I am avoiding the real world, interacting only digitally.

They’ve selected a number of songs “Just For [Me]”.

1. I Got You; Split Enz
2. She Drives Me Crazy; Fine Young Cannibals
3. Don’t Dream It’s Over; Crowded House
4. Save It For Later; The English Beat
5. Is She Really Going out With Him?; Joe Jackson
6. Afternoon Delight; Starland Vocal Band
7. Here’s Where the Story Ends; The Sundays
8. Knock Three Times; Tony Orlando & Dawn
9. I Don’t Like Mondays; The Boomtown Rats
10. Southern Cross; Crosby, Stills & Nash

There are several things I don’t know/understand about this list.

Why can’t iTunes know the entire contents of my personal music library, including those albums or songs that I did not purchase from iTunes, in order to avoid suggesting to me purchasing music that I already own?

Why is that list so lovely?

How long will it be before “Here’s Where the Story Ends” is no longer stuck in my head?

Why was I so much happier in the late 1980s than I am right now? Were those really the best years of our lives? What if that was it? High school? It sucked more than it didn’t, but somehow, right now, it seems like the times that didn’t suck then were way more exciting than the times that don’t suck right now. Did I waste my entire youth? Did I?*

Crosby, Stills & Nash? They made approximately one song that I like, and Southern Cross ain’t it. Sure, I know all the words, because it’s a song that was played on the radio sometime in my lifetime, but still.

(I like Crosby, Stills & Nash a heck of a lot more than I like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. How do I tell iTunes that? (Neil Young bugs me. I just want them to know.))

Shouldn’t I maybe consider backing up my personal music library sometime soon, since I add something like 75 songs a month to it?

Where the hell is my external hard drive? (I bought it because it was little, which makes it easier to lose, but there’s only so much room in here. Is it time to designate a space as “where the external hard drive, which holds my extensive music library (among other important digital archives), belongs”?)

Why is that English Beat song only on a cassette tape? Why do I still own a functioning cassette player? Why couldn’t the ex-boyfriends who made me truly classic mix tapes when I was young have considered that technology would change, and that I would need that mix tape in a more digital-friendly format?

When, oh when, will my knee stop hurting, so I can go dancing?

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* Did you? (If you did, kindly don’t call me and tell me about your concern that you did, because I feel delicate.)

I have not enjoyed this week at all. Some good stuff happened, but it mostly sucked.

One good thing that happened is that I was offered a job. However, being used to the life of a temp, and really rather enjoying it, I’m not as excited about that as I might otherwise be. When I accept the position, which I intend to do Monday morning, I will have the word “manager” in my job title, which I have managed to avoid for almost 20 years of a working life (except for when I “managed” a bookstore, which clearly does not count, and is also practically the definition of being underemployed).

What that means, of course, is that I will no longer be underemployed, a thing I have managed to be for all but 4 of the nearly 20 years I have been a member of the workforce, largely because I don’t want to be the kind of person who has to ask a hostess at a restaurant whether the reception is good in the area I am going to be seated in, in case anyone calls me on my company-supplied cell phone during my lunch break. (I know people like that, and I like them, but I don’t want to be like them.*) I also don’t want to be the kind of person who always works 70 hours a week, or the kind of person who has to make decisions based on office politics instead of practicality, or the kind of person who engages in any number of other clichés about “management”. (Also, my not being underemployed is an actual sign of the apocalypse. Is Jennifer living up to something even remotely approximating her potential? Stock up on canned goods.)

I think this will work out okay, but I’m also sort of nervous. It’s not that I can’t do the job. Of course I can. It’s just that I’m not 100 percent convinced that I want to. I would rather have a job title that includes the word “coordinator” than one that includes the word “manager”, but I’ve really got to start saving up money for the doublewide, so being a temp can’t last forever, and neither can insisting on having a job that isn’t all that important, but is also really not that strenuous. As often as I say “It’s just semantics,” one would think that I’d get over this measly little word, and just be glad to be gainfully employed, but I’m struggling.

In other news, well, there is no other news. I intend to spend this weekend considering the loss of autonomy I’ll sign up for Monday morning, and the possibility that I might have to occasionally travel for work, which would make the kitty cats miss me, and probably a couple of other inane things that have no tangible import. Then I’ll go to work Monday, sign a contract, schedule a number of surely asinine “orientation” sessions in which people will read to me (very, very slowly) the bullet points from poorly designed PowerPoint presentations, and then I’ll wake up Tuesday a person who is not underemployed.

And then there will likely be horsemen, and a reckoning of some sort, I think, and other junk I can’t name because I’ve never actually read the Book of Revelation. **

In sum, if there was nothing to complain about, I would complain about the fact that there was nothing to complain about. Really, why do I write here at all?
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*And I don’t think they’re going to give me a cell phone. If they try to, I might cry.

** Hey! It’s Easter weekend. Maybe I’ll sit down with the Bible for a while.

I want to mount my fancy 22” monitor to the wall. Mounts are available from $15 to $57, depending on whether you want to be able to tilt your monitor all around or not. I don’t see any sense in tilting it; I just want it to take up less space, which would be super-nifty considering how little space it takes up already. Sure, professional installation is suggested, but give me a break, I can wield a drill. (Whether or not the walls here are sturdy enough to hold up my roughly ten pound monitor is a concern, but I’m just ignoring that for the moment.) Problem is, there’s a certain commitment in mounting something more useful than a picture to your wall. That would make it seem like I want to stay here.

I want to move. I feel wrath towards my neighbors, even the seemingly nice, professional people I see on the bus in the morning. When we all take the bus home in the evening, I get off at the corner, so I can use the crosswalk to cross the street. Sure, that’s mostly my strenuous self-preservation instinct, but I’m also setting a good example. My neighbors get off the bus half a block later than I do, in the middle of the street, and then cross without using a crosswalk. Many people in my neighborhood seem to have come from places (perhaps in our very own country) where crosswalks are not available, and willy-nilly pushing a stroller in front of you diagonally across the street while your dog is on a leash behind you is de rigeur. It’s not like I’ve never jaywalked. I have, when I’ve felt strong and vibrant and capable of outrunning a speeding car.* But I would never in a million years jaywalk while pushing a stroller, and people in my neighborhood do it all the time, even though cars are regularly exceeding the speed limit on my street. Thing is, I really want to sit down and talk to a couple of my neighbors about the fact that they’re setting a bad example, but I don’t think they’d be particularly receptive to my ideas about how and when and where to cross the street. We’re all being assimilated into the ghetto. I need to escape before I am further assimilated.

I want not to have The Charlatans’ “Bad Days” stuck in my head. “There’s a death cloud hanging over you”? Boy are those stupid lyrics. The album was free, and that song would be fun to dance to, if I could dance, but neither its lack of cost nor its one dance-able track mitigates the fact that it is an album rife with really, really bad lyrics. I am too sensitive and delicate for modern music. (However, at least I no longer have Duncan Sheik’s “Barely Breathing” stuck in my head.) (Fucking allergies.) (And again with the stupid lyrics. Damn it all to hell.)

I want to make my old desktop computer work again. I know I can, even though I gave up installing a new operating system when I was only halfway through, and now when I turn it on it simply reboots itself a hundred million times. I know I can fix it, because I am smart. But I am not patient. Maybe it needs a new part, maybe it needs two or three new parts. I think what it really needs is someone who possesses more patience than I to sit down with it for half an hour. In addition to lacking patience, I also lack the sort of funds one needs to pay someone to make up for one’s short-comings. And, I’m convinced that Windows Vista and my camera don’t get along, and if I just had a computer running some less fancy version of Windows, my camera would function properly, instead of giving up the ghost after eight or ten pictures. All I know at the moment is that I can’t focus on anything for more than about 45 seconds, because my knee hurts.

Well, that, and I’m on the very verge of having a real job, and I’m sort of freaking out about it. I don’t want a real job. I want a sugar daddy. Obviously, I have to have a real job, because I would surely tire of a sugar daddy after a while, being fickle and all. Why is it so very hard to be me?

And why do I have a natural predilection towards whining? It’s not a very attractive trait, is it? This knee problem is the sort of thing I can see shoving someone into insurmountable depression, making simple day-to-day problems seem overwhelming, forcing one to give in to circumstances beyond their control. I know I’m stronger than that, otherwise I wouldn’t have made it this far along. As soon as I have health insurance again I’ll be visiting someone who knows more about my joints than I do, and I’m sure this will wind up a little blip on the long list of things I’ve had to endure in my life. I know at least a couple of people who have physical ailments much greater than mine, and I admire their ability to ignore the pedestrian and manage when things seem unmanageable. But it’s really funny how something so innocent can be so all-consuming. Bad days indeed. Somehow I keep my spirits up. I think it’s probably neurotic that I do, but so be it.

I’ll try not to be so depressing tomorrow.
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* Which happens not to be the case at the moment, on account of my other knee hurts now. My right knee doesn’t hurt at all, but now my left knee is killing me. However, seeing as how I haven’t been a social person in a very long time now, I’m going to go out Saturday night. Even if I can’t dance, I can club-hop, and watch other people dance, and have boys buy me drinks because they feel sorry for me because my knee hurts. Sure, that’s not the life I want to lead, but a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.

Dear Just Born,

Why are there no shamrock-shaped Marshmallow Peeps?

Just sayin’,

Jennifer

*****

Dear War Protesters,

I’m pretty pissed off about this war too. However, I intend not to attempt to block traffic on Wednesday to show my anger. Ultimately, I believe that’s not only counter-productive, but dangerous. Intelligent and potentially mind-changing discourse about the behavior of our leaders is unlikely to happen in a traffic circle blocked entirely by bicyclists. If I understand correctly, there’s going to be a knit-in. I can get behind that,* but I can’t get behind jamming up traffic so that innocent people who need ambulances find their emergency services delayed.

I like just fine the idea of dressing people up in death masks and having them wander through Washington DC as if they’d returned to make their arguments against their possibly unnecessary deaths. Sure, you might muck up sidewalk traffic, what with the curious onlookers and all, but very rarely does an ambulance need to use a sidewalk to treat an injured or ill person.

Granted, I need to use the sidewalk to get to work, but I respect and applaud the free expression of your ideas and beliefs. I’d just like you to do it respectfully, and not in a way that impedes my morning or evening commute.

Trying to figure out a way to work from home on Wednesday,

Jennifer

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* Even though anyone who may have stumbled upon my blog without having first met me likely thinks I’m a “granny”, I’m not. I just act like one, what with the bum knee (feeling much better, thanks for asking), and the cats, and the baking. Either way, I can’t really afford to take a day off work to knit, much though I‘d like to.

*****

Dear Pollen,

You make me sneeze. A lot.

Ah-choo!

Jennifer

*****

Dear London Broil Recipe I Found on the Internet on Sunday,

You are not delicious. At all. About this I am sad.

Disappointedly,

Jennifer

*****

Dear People Who Read My Blog,

You seriously have nothing better to do? Maybe you should take up knitting.

Fondly,

Jennifer