Making It Work

I’ve used Mr. Dingo’s absence this week to catch up on my reality TV and fashion make-over shows.  They are not my usual fair.  No, really.  They are more like guilty pleasures that I watch when I need some mind candy.  Mr. Dingo tries to steer me away from these shows because I am living proof that entertainment as advertising works.  I can resist subliminal advertising but blatantly yell, “Buy this!” while holding up a pair of black suede pumps and I’ll respond, “Okay!” After these fashion shows I am convinced that everything I wear is not appropriate for my body type, personality, age, or color palette.  And the plastic surgery shows?  I think Mr. Dingo is looking into installing a V-chip on our cable box.  I can’t watch one of these shows without thinking that a little diet and exercise…and liposuction…and an eye lift…and butt booster…are completely acceptable ways to continue to eat Peeps and lose a few pounds.  Here are a few of my favorites:

How do I look? Finola Hughes, the Barbara Walters of the fashion make-over realm, likes to dig deep to the psyche to find the real reasons their target for the week wears paisley culottes with a plaid satin blouse.  The target always ends up in tears.  I don’t have a deep dark secret. I’m just convinced that I’ll fit back into my size sixes in a few months and I hate shopping.  My friend Sunny is my only shopping buddy. She has a way of making me enjoy shopping.  It’s not a leisurely waste of the day expedition but a “wham, bam, buy that m’am” extreme sport.  She has an eye for fashion, taste, and simplicity.  And speed.  We can hit Old Navy, Anthropology, Ann Taylor, and Urban Outfitters in the time it takes for a governor to be brought down by a sex scandal.  Maybe even faster.

What Not To Wear. I know what not to wear.  Anything in my closet.

Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style. This show is terrible.  I’m disappointed in Mr. Gunn but I’ve taken his words to heart. His words from Project Runway. 

“Make it Work” has become my motto as I try to find something to wear in the morning.  I fumble and grumble through my closet and pick out what’s clean, non-wrinkled, and can fit without camel-toe and gaping buttons. 

Make it Work to make it to work.  That issue may soon be moot.  My boss has decided, in spite of the agreement we had when I accepted the job nine months ago, that she wants me to work longer hours and take on more responsibility with no increase in pay.  It’s not in the budget.  What?  I already work for peanuts…wait, let me rephrase, I went grocery shopping earlier this week and I saw the price of peanuts.  Those things are expensive!  It’s more like I work for…dryer lint…yes, that’s right, dryer lint.  Actually, even if they would increase my pay from dryer lint to, let’s say, belly button fuzz, I still wouldn’t be able to stay.  Extending my hours beyond the 35-hour week I already have would conflict with my teaching schedule.  I love teaching.  With teaching assignments so hard to come by, I’m not about to jeopardize my placement.

Believe me, I like my job and I do it well, often going above and beyond the call of duty.  She needed her suit picked up from Bloomingdale’s during the only snow storm we’ve had this year.  I did it.  She wanted a venti-white mocha-skim-no whip-wet-cappuccino and the cappuccino machine at the closest Starbucks was broken.  I walked eight blocks to the next Starbucks.  In the rain.  Without an umbrella.  Other NYC neighborhoods have a Starbucks on every corner and sometimes even just across the street from each other. Our next closest Starbucks is in another zip code.  Another time zone.  Another dimension.  I can’t even tell you how many times she has had me traipse all over the city trying to locate a particular type of tulip, orchid, Japanese coin plant, or shrub of the moment to thank a colleague.  In the rain.  She seems to like assigning field trips when it’s raining.  I’m rather fortunate that I haven’t electrocuted myself as I typed her thank you notes and meeting minutes with my hair dripping onto the keyboard.  Did I tell you that I was an office assistant and not a personal assistant?  Yeah, sometimes I think she forgets that too.

She’s actually not that bad to work for.  She’s certainly no Devil Wears Prada.  She’s more like Mrs. Garrett Wears St. Johns.  In addition to Mrs. Garrett, my office has an interesting cast of characters.  There’s Juicy, our self-titled fashionista who thinks that Juicy Couture is actually that and can’t stop talking about her Juicy perfume, her Juicy purse, her Juicy jewelry and anything else she can append the Juicy name to.  Sorry, hon.  I don’t care who made your velour track suit.  Inappropriate for the office.  Oh, and Juicy, consistently coming in at 11am and then asking your already overworked office mates to help you with your work is not going over well.  How you get away with it I’ll never know.  I suppose it’s because your Juicy perfume is so strong that no one can get close enough to actually talk to you about your lack of punctuality.  Mrs. Garrett could send an email to you but I don’t think you are off Facebook or Match.com long enough to check your office email.  Then there’s Passive-Aggressive Pat.  I call her Pap for short.  She’s as intrusive as a gyno exam and as warm as a speculum.  Weezy, Sassy, and The Disappearing Man round out the crew.  There are at least ten other people in my office but they’re all normal.

There was so much to tell you.  Academia is not the civil environment you would think.  There’s enough backstabbing and political maneuvering to keep Wonkette blogging for days.  I will have to save my workplace musings for my tell-all memoir. Teaching and working on my thesis will keep me plenty busy, but now that I’ll never move from dryer lint to peanuts, I will have to put off wardrobe updates and plastic surgery for another day.  No matter, I can make it work.

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Was My Face Red!

Amanda at Shamelessly Sassy is hosting an Embarrass Yourself contest.  Since I embarrass myself on a daily basis my problem was not finding something to write about but narrowing down the options.  With Mr. Dingo vacationing in meetings in Miami I called Mom for suggestions.  She took to the task a little too enthusiastically.

Mom:  What about the time you fell off the stage in front of your entire high school?
Me:  Oh, that’s a good one!  I’ll write about –
Mom:  How about the time you almost drowned at the Sunday School picnic!
Me:  Mom!  That’s not funny, I almost died!
Mom:  It’s funny in hindsight, dear.
Me:  Um, not really.
Mom:  Oh! Remember when you wiped out on your rollerblades in front of the –
Me:  Mom! I told you to never mention that again.  You’re not being very helpful.  This is Embarrass Yourself for $100, not Embarrass Yourself So That You Can Never Go Out In Public Again.

We ended the conversation shortly thereafter with my realization that I am more accident prone than I cared to acknowledged.  I am a magnet for embarrassing spills (both liquid and gravitational) and while I am the only person I know whose yoga has not made them lithe and limber, I have the unenviable ability to insert my foot into my mouth with regularity.  I finally decided which embarrassing moment to post to Amanda’s web site.  You should take a look at some of the other entries.  Hilarious!  You can even post your own.  The contest ends today.  Here’s my entry:

Dingo Girl and I had just moved into a 5th floor walk-up and my legs hadn’t adjusted to the compulsory workout.  Around mid-afternoon on the second day we were there Dingo Girl needed to go for a walk.  I decided to multi-task and take down empty boxes and a bag of trash.  It was awkward getting down the stairs with the boxes under one arm and the trash bag in the other with Dingo Girl’s leash in my teeth.  We got to the street and had to go just around the corner to get rid of my garbage.  People waved and smiled as we walked by.  I figured we probably made an amusing convoy and was happy to see that people in my new neighborhood were friendly and had a sense of humor.  Dingo Girl, for once, did not try to dart ahead.  I could hear the click-clack of her nails on the sidewalk and it sounded as if she was happily prancing behind me.  I was so proud of my girl.  We’d been working on “heel” but Dingo Girl was more like, “hell no,” so this obedient stroll down the sidewalk was a major improvement. 

We made it to the trash bin which was on a busy side street and I dumped my things on top of the heap.  Taking the leash out of my mouth, I turned around to praise Dingo Girl profusely for her good behavior.  I just about died.  Apparently, Dingo Girl decided to “help” me take things downstairs and grabbed something from the dirty clothes pile on the way out.  My bright turquoise blue thong underwear.  No wonder people were smiling and waving — oh no!  They weren’t waving!  They had been pointing!  I made a hasty grab for my unmentionables which instantly turned into her favorite games: keep away and tug of war.  We continued to make a spectacle on the street with me trying to be as discreet as possible…”drop it, drop it”…yes, one more command we needed to work on.  I managed to get my hands on the delicate fabric but as soon as I had a firm grip on it the waistband broke knocking me a bit off balance which made me drop the leash.  This was Dingo Girl’s cue for mayhem.  She never moved more than four feet from me but she darted about like a hummingbird on crack waving her trophy.  It was at this time that a police officer who was walking to his patrol car parked near the trash bins walked up behind me and laughingly asked if I needed help.  Before I could say no and that I had it all under control (wasn’t it obvious?), Dingo Girl walked up to the police officer and promptly dropped the shredded thong at his feet.

I wondered if it was too late to break the lease and move somewhere far, far away.

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Me and My Peeps

Mr. Dingo left for a week-long business trip.  In Miami.  Yes, Miami.  I’m not feeling too bad for him.  It’s 40 degrees here.  It’s in the mid-70s in Miami.  Yeah, not feeling for you Mr. Dingo.  Part of me wanted to make this trip with him, but the other part of me, the part that can’t fit into my sassy pink bikini, is glad that I don’t have to put my ass-ets on display right now.  Mr. Dingo is a fantastic cook.  When he’s gone my dining options are limited to salads and sandwiches.  This is the perfect time to prepare for our trip to Vegas.  I’m going to use this week of salad and sandwiches to kick start my healthy living plan.  You know, the plan I talked about on Sunday.  You did read Sunday’s post didn’t you?  No?  Okay, I’ll give you a few minutes to scroll down and read it.

…Your’re back.  That was quick. Okay, so as part of my healthy living plan I’m cutting back on the sweets.  I’ve got a mad sweet tooth.  In the interest of full disclosure, Mr. Dingo left a Snickers Bar on his desk.  I snickered as I ate it.  But that’s it, I promise.  No more sweets.  Except for Peeps.  I love Peeps.  Those damn yellow chicks are sugary, marshmallowy, teeth-aching goodness.  Not only has the calendar screwed up my sleep with Daylight Savings Time, but it’s placed Easter and my healthy living plan in direct confrontation.  Good v. Evil.  Just between you and me, Satan would have had an easier time tempting Jesus in the wilderness if he had just offered him some Peeps. 

To thwart the confectionary allure of yellow chicks and pink bunnies, I stocked up on fruits and veggies yesterday.  I may pick at the fruit but I’m pretty confident that the carrots and red peppers will live to be an overripe old age in my rotter.  Admit it; you have a rotter in your fridge as well.  Oh, the Maytag and Kenmore PR machine may call it a “crisper”, but we all know that once those veggies hit that drawer, they never see the light of day.

I’ve also incorporated exercise into my healthy living plan.  I had to pick my dropped jaw off the floor at least one hundred times while watching High School Reunion.  That’ll do wonders for the abs.  Have you seen this train wreck show?  In a nutshell, fifteen high school stereotypes (the jock, the outcast, the spoiled girl, the popular girl, etc) are plucked from the 1987 class of a Dallas, Texas high school and whisked away to a beautiful mansion in Hawaii.  Drama ensues.  The drama is about as manufactured as my Peeps and not nearly as tasty.  You can click here if you want to know more but believe me, you don’t. 

What makes people attend their high school reunions?  I know I went to mine just to show people how much I had changed from the skinny, insecure, big-haired, brainiac they knew.  Isn’t that a dumb reason to spend two hundred dollars on a dress, more bucks on a plane ticket, and a sleepless night?  Why in the world did I care about the opinions of people I hadn’t seen in 10 years a long time?  I didn’t love high school but I didn’t hate it either.  I was definitely glad to move on.  I hadn’t thought about most of my former classmates in years, yet when the reunion notice came I broke out into a cold sweat.  Had I changed enough I wondered?  Was it a change for the better?  Will the pretty girl have just gotten prettier, making my carefully applied make-up look like spackle on a monkey?  Will the quarterback still ignore me, perhaps bumping my arm and spilling my watered down drink all over my new dress as he launches for a chest bump with his former wide receiver?  Will they think that I am still the brainiac and ask me questions to test me?  By the power of Peeps, I hoped not.  In the intervening years, I’d replaced vital, need to know facts about chemical formulas, historical dates, and word problems involving trains leaving stations and widget production with useless trivia:  elephants are the only land mammals that can’t jump, a mosquito has 47 teeth, Da Vinci spent 12 years painting Mona Lisa’s lips.  I could go on and on.  This info won’t help me on my English Subject Matter GRE, but if Alex Trebek calls, I may be able to forgo Ph.D. work altogether.  But I digress….

I went to my reunion.  It conformed to every stereotype.  The pretty girl was working on her third divorce and prowling the room to find her next sugar daddy.  The quarterback had reached manatee proportions.  He and the rest of the team sat in the corner nursing their beers and their broken dreams with constant replays of high school games.  The nerd made lots of money in the dot com boom.  What is the brainiac supposed to become?  I don’t know.  I think I defied their expectations.  I was voted “Most Improved”.  Most Improved?  Most Improved!? It was meant as a compliment and years ago I would’ve basked in the title and hoped it came with a glittering tiara.  But as an adult, Most Improved, my ass.  Who were these people to keep judging me and why did I fall for it again?  Hadn’t I learned anything in the intervening years?  Yes, I had.  And so I left the reunion snagging some chocolate-covered strawberries on the way out.  Snagging all the chocolate-covered strawberries on the way out.  Did you know that a strawberry is not a true berry because its approximately 200 seeds are on the outside?

So I watched High School Reunion, smug and snug.  Snug.  The tightening of my waistband as I performed another waist bend to scoop my eyes off the floor after a particularly robust eye roll — really, this show is that ridiculous — brought my arrogance crashing to the ground.  My healthy living plan — exercise and eating right was really a mini-plan (and, you may have noticed, not a very successful one).  A plan to make me sleek and bikini ready to sit by a pool in Vegas to be judged thin and pretty by people I don’t know.  And yes, this time I want to be judged Most Improved.  Apparently, my Peeps, in all their artificial flavors and coloring are the only things keeping it real. 

This hypocrisy is brought to you by the letter “H”.

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Bill Gates Owes Me

Daylight savings time.  I did a Google search to find out who decided that it was in the best interest of everyone involved to rob me of an hour of sleep.  The first Google entry says Daylight Savings Time Help and Support Center.  I am not a pleasant person when I’ve been short-shrifted some sleep and I am going to be an absolute monster for the next two weeks until my body and my mind get on the same schedule.  I need all the help and support I can get.  I expected an advertisement for melatonin or one of those daylight alarm clocks that wakes you up by simulating the effect of sunrise.  (I’ve always wondered how a snooze button would work on one of those clocks.  Do you tap a button to create a ten-minute solar eclipse?) Instead of taking me to anything even remotely useful, the link was to a Microsoft Web page.  Really?  I type in “Daylight Savings Time” and Bill Gates is the first Google entry?  Wikipedia, you let me down.  And damn you Bill Gates!  As if that stupid talking paper clip isn’t enough, he’s now cornered the market on DST.  Is there anything that man doesn’t own?  Whoever said that you can’t buy time never met Bill Gates.  Okay, how much is it going to cost me to get my hour back?

If we’re going to spring forward tomorrow, as my first-grade teacher liked to say, I guess it’s also a good time to do some spring cleaning.  Dingo Girl and I had a fantastic walk in The Ramble this morning.  The Ramble is my favorite place in Central Park.  With thirty-eight acres of hills, streams, paths, trees, flowers, and wildlife, The Ramble is as far away from the city as you can get while still being in the city.  It is the Calgon of New York real estate.  Remarkably, although I was less than a five-minute walk from Broadway on the West side, not a single city sound interrupted this morning’s walk except for my heavy stalker-like breathing as I dragged myself up yet another hill.  I have gotten out of shape in the last year.  Wait, let me rephrase, it’s not that I’ve gotten out of shape as much as I’ve acquired a new one.  A rounder one.  That I wear over my old one.  Muscle and abs have turned to mush and ass.  In spite of my labored breathing, I came home refreshed and Dingo Girl came home tired — chasing squirrels is exhausting work!  It seemed like a good start to Spring.  I was determined that the brisk walk up and down the hills would kick-start a new exercise and eating program for me.  Not only do I want to be healthy and live to a ripe old age but, as an added incentive, Mr. Dingo and I are headed to Vegas at the end of May.  I want to be ready to sit by the pool at the Bellagio in the same pink and more pink string bikini I wore five years ago.  I could fit into it now but I would look like one of those pork loins wrapped with kitchen twine.  I would be stretching the limits of the spandex and I wouldn’t want to injure anyone standing near me if my pink bikini decided to blow. 

All the optimism came to a crushing halt after a trip to the grocery store.  Gummi Bears, Mike & Ikes, and Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies are not exactly low-fat fare.  But it was yummy.  Never, never shop on an empty stomach.  So tomorrow — tomorrow I say! — I start a healthy eating plan.  It can be done and I will be the one to do it!  After I finish the cookies.  And, yes, the gummi bears, the Mike & Ikes, the ribs….  Oh, did I mention that we had ribs for dinner?  Anyway, after everything else has been consumed, I will be ready for my new body.  Dear, dear, dear readers, it would not hurt my feelings in the least if you submitted my name to the people at Extreme Makeover. 

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Doodle Dee Dee

Dingo Girl loves stuffed animals.  Dingo Girl loves stuffed animals that make lots of noise.  Dingo Mama and Mr. Dingo are about to go insane over her new favorite stuffed noise maker, the Deedle Dudes Cow.  Here’s a picture of this oh-so-wonderful toy. 

And while a picture may paint a thousand words, it certainly does not do this toy justice.  You would think that a toy cow would moo.  But not Deedle Dudes Cow.  Oh no, not this cow.  This cow has forsaken the pastoral, rustic moo for a more techno sound.  Listen to the audio clip below to share our pain, because you know, I’m all about sharing. 

Speaking of sharing, I will send a Deedle Dudes Cow to the first person to submit a comment telling me about your bundle of joy’s most annoying toy.

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