Home Sweet Home

For a while now, my coworker has been buying a house. She's a single (divorced) woman in her late-late 40's and she's a director at a non-profit. We have a staff of about 15 and four of them are directors. I actually think our organization is extremely top-heavy, leaving just four of us to support all these executives who don't know how to use their phones and who think the garbage disposal is a trash compactor. I am now Executive Assistant to THREE people, in addition to doing all the shmutz that the Marketing Director was doing before she left to have a baby, being the benefits administrator, and answering endless questions from a receptionist whom we hired because... well, she's never been a receptionist before, and the other day asked me, "What are binder clips?" so I'm still pondering why we hired her. I like her, though. She's cheerful and nice, and has taken several crap-tastic duties from me, such as "reconciling the petty cash" and "going to the bank to make the deposit." Things are going smoothly so I don't have any real complaints right now. It's just that working 8:00 ish - 5:30 in a small office just sometimes feels like a movie or TV show ABOUT an office, where the thing that makes the show funny is that it's the characters on the show that are experiencing the ridiculous situations, not you, the viewer. Well, it's like I'm IN one of those shows, and the show doesn't end in an hour or half an hour, and the joke, or the frustration, or the ridiculousness is on me.

But I digress. This woman has been buying a house (and we know allll about it because we've heard allllll about it, every step of the way, no details spared). I'm happy for her... I just wish she's buy it and have a housewarming party already so I can enjoy her success and you know, have a drink. So yesterday she comes to the front office area where I work and announced to those of us who work there (none of us there own a house) that she's now officially a homeowner. My coworker Krystal, who was grumpy, had not eaten and who had just taken six straight hours of notes in a meeting looked up, smiled weakly and said, "That's great... congratulations!" and I screeched, "YAYYYY!!!! and threw my paper napkin up in the air. I told her had I known it was going to be official that day I would have gotten shreds ready to toss all over her.

Sometimes I look at her and wonder what she'd look like with a nose job, and I also wonder why, if she can afford a house, why she's not already gotten a nose job. And I'm not just being sour, shallow and bitchy, although I acknowledge that I am in part being sour, shallow and bitchy. I realize this is why she owns a house and I throw my money away on rent... because my priorities are screwed and because I'd rather get a nose job than save for a house.

Well: home sweet home.