What Kind of Monster Hates Babies?!

Bossman has finally done it - he's convinced me that he is indeed a monster, not a human at all. Today was the day that one of the staff, who has been on extended maternity leave since November 1 (she gave birth right around Thanksgiving) was going to come to work to visit and bring the baby. She announced she was three months pregnant at a meeting a few days after I'd started working there. She's in her early 40's and has only been married for two years... apparently it was kind of looking as though the husband and kid thing just wasn't going to happen for her... and then it happened, after some rounds of eHarmony. She's an attractive lady, and very sweet. She was one of my four bosses and I didn't enjoy her work style or enjoy working with her, but she was nice enough, and it was fun to see her pregnancy progress. We threw her a little work shower, and it's been fun to see the baby in photos. Anyhow, today was the first time she was going to visit the office and show us the baby.

Bossman, BossLady, the third person I support, whom I'll call The Nutty Professor, and one of my co-workers were in a meeting in the Bossman's office, which adjoins the main room of the "house" we work in. I work right outside Bossman's office. About 15 minutes before the new mom was to arrive, Bossman came out of the meeting and told me not to interrupt them for her; they didn't want to see her. Mind you, she's on the staff. We haven't seen her since October 31. She gave birth. We haven't seen the baby.
She CALLED ME AND ASKED ME WHAT THEIR CALENDARS LOOKED LIKE so she could be sure to see everybody! I was stunned by what he was saying, and asking me to do. I mean, as an Executive Assistant I have to be some kind of gatekeeper blocking solicitors from my executives like they're friggin Madonna or President Obama. I understand that; I have no qualms about it. But telling my co-worker that these people can't be bothered to see her after all these months, and meet her baby?! Or worse, pretending that they're not in there (when you can clearly hear them talking inside his office). That's over the top. My soul is worth more than my paycheck, and I did not intend to burn in Hell for doing something that mean and nasty. I finally decided to just avoid it altogether. I greeted the new mom when she arrived and saw the baby, who was just waking up and was totally adorable, and after we chatted I just walked outside and went down to a cafe for a beverage.

I later learned from my co-worker who was in the meeting that there was an actual discussion among those in the meeting about whether they would deign to come out of their meeting and meet the baby. BossLady stated that she hates babies, Bossman agreed (he has two adult sons), and my co-worker apparently turned red in the face because she too doesn't like babies, but didn't want to agree with BossLady. Bossman then told her she was red in the face, at which point she admitted she dislikes babies. The Nutty Professor, who has a three year old, said, "You guys..." but that was about it.

Okay, what kind of people don't like babies?! I can see not wanting to have one... I don't want to have one. I can see not wanting to have to take care of one for, say, eight hours. But seriously, who can possibly object to a quick three minute interaction with a baby, while the parent is present and if the baby poops their diaper or starts crying the parent will take care of it? I mean, that is just like taking a happy pill, right? Kittens, puppies, rainbows, flowers and babies are inarguably cute, happy, joyful things, right?! Honestly, Bossman and BossLady (hates babies and has a black cat: you do the math...) have convinced me once and for all that they are demon spawn.

God told Miley to Do It

Miley Cyrus (about the fact that people are upset that a photo of her pulling her eyes back and making "slant eyes" is circulating around the Internet):


“I’ve also been told there are some people upset about some pictures taken of me with friends making goofy faces! Well, I’m sorry if those people looked at those pics and took them wrong and out of context!

“In NO way was I making fun of any ethnicity! I was simply making a goofy face. When did that become newsworthy?

“It seems someone is trying to make something out of nothing to me. If that would of [sic] been anyone else, it would of been overlooked! I definitely feel like the press is trying to make me out as the new ‘BAD GIRL’!”

“I feel like now that Britney is back on top of her game again, they need someone to pick on! Lucky me! haha Anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know what is on my heart. You guys know me and have been by my side every step of the way!

“You guys know my heart and know the most important things to me are my friends, family, fans, and GOD! In NO WAY do I want to disappoint any of you! But, when I have made mistakes in the past, I feel like I’ve owned up to them and apologized.”

“I really wish everyone would stop focusing on my personal life and get back to focusing on what I love! Music and Acting! Hopefully, I will be touring again this fall! Yayy! =] It will be a nice change to be back out on the road again!”

Lord. It's time for someone to go back into her Star Wagon, sit down with the tutor and crack open the history book. The exaggeration of Asian eye shape has long been used to demonize and dehumanize Asian people. It has a historic context, like the N word. Asian caricatures with small slanted eyes were circulated in American newspapers and helped establish Japanese Americans as "different" - different enough to round up and put into internment camps during WWII.
Get a clue!

20-25

Well, I went to my check up today and they say my vision is 20/25! Prior to my surgery it was 20/400. Definitely worth the money and the alien-abduction experience! I'm thrilled, so far.

Abducted by aliens.

An hour and a half ago I had Lasik eye surgery. I'm supposed to keep my eyes closed for 4-6 hours. My eyes are closed right now, actually. DD is typing for me as I dictate. This is awesome. I think I could probably finally write my novel if we did this all the time.
Before I had this procedure I talked to several people who had had the procedure before, as well as reading about it on the internet. Everybody says something different about what it's like. One person said, "It's no big deal. It's so easy!" One person said his brother said his eyes were numb the whole time -- he didn't feel anything. One person told me her eyes were in actual pain afterward for several hours. And one lady who actually works at the surgeon's office described the sensation as, "Having your eyeballs sucked." That was worrisome.
They offered me a Valium. At the time, I was feeling perfectly calm and declined. But an hour later, after lots of tests had been done and pictures of my eyeballs taken and I was led into a room and told to lie down on this inverted thing with a circle for my head I started getting nervous and wished I had taken the Valium. A few minutes later when they started TAPING MY EYELASHES TO MY EYELIDS I really wished I had taken the Valium. The next thing I knew they pivoted my head under this crazy, futuristic, space-age looking laser thing and I suddenly realized that it was exactly like this recurring dream I have in which I'm being abducted by aliens and the aliens are getting ready to do some examinations/experiments on my eyes. The doctor then inserted some things into my eyes to hold them open (I don't know what they were; I don't even want to know) and at some point he told me there would be some pressure on my eye and there was, which freaked me out so much I thought I was going to throw up. The next thing you know, everything went black, presumably when he was cutting a flap in my cornea sooooooo freaky. Then, I was instructed to look at this light while they lasered my eye. Then I started having a déjà vu which was really freaky and which probably indicates I was abducted by aliens at some point... I did grow up in the desert... it was very rural... there were many drunken, unaccounted for evenings spent with friends or staggering around under the influence of tequila. Next came the smell of my own burning eye-flesh which was disgusting and somewhat embarrassing much like a fart. At this point, I told the doctor, "I'm really sorry you have to smell my eye burning. That's really gross." He then told me that that's why he wears a mask and also that there is a suction thing near my eye sucking most of the smoke away. Sooooo gross.
This whole process was repeated on the other eye and it was just as gross. Now I'm home sitting here with my eyes closed. So this is what Lasik is really like, no Pollyanna bullshit... It's gross, you smell your own flesh burning, weird stuff is being done to your eye and you might flashback to the time you were abducted by aliens. All I have to say is: 1) I could've bought a lot of clothes for $4600.
2) I really hope that when I wake up tomorrow I'll be able to see perfectly, it will be like a miracle, and worth it.

Mom Jeans

My friend Katty recently got a pair of "Not Your Daughter's Jeans" brand jeans. She purchased them at Nordstrom. I'm a fan of Paige Premium Denim, and was explaining to her that Paige Premium Denim comes in "plus" sizes at Nordstrom, so she went over there, but instead of getting the Paige jeans, she got these Not Your Daughter's Jeans.
For one thing, they're about half as expensive. For another, they have some kind of "tummy tuck" technology built in, and thirdly, they have a 9 inch rise! Katty, whom I consider rather fashion-challenged (and she knows this about herself and she knows I agree with her), then went home, looked up the jeans online and realized they are indeed "mom jeans", and heavily marketed that way. (Above is some of Not Your Daughter's Jeans' imagery.) Duh! They're not called "Not Your Daughter's" for no reason.
She then freaked out and wrote me a hilarious email. There's no turning back, though... she's already having them hemmed.

I can't wait to see them, actually. I've never seen Katty in well-fitted, good-quality denim and I'm rather excited. I now also want to try on the Mom Jeans just for fun. At my height and with my proportions, the 9" rise will probably come up to my armpits.

Ella Moss Outlines Your Ta-tas

Yesterday while at an unglamorous work event my coworker Krystal and I saw some signs announcing "Huge Sample Sale". We hightailed it over there. Inside, they were selling Ella Moss, BCBG and Splendid. Krystal had never been to a sample sale before.

I love Ella Moss, but on my non-profit admin salary and at at least $100 a top, I usually only get one Ella Moss top per season. Here, they were selling samples for $35 - $39 each. I only found two tops I wanted to try on, though, and although I loved one of them, it was open all the way down the back, therefore has to be worn without a bra, which rules out wearing it to work or in any temperatures below, say, 72 degrees. (Unless one was to wear some kind of pasties or those nipple covers they sell that are called "Lowbeams".

I saw this top at the sample sale. This looks like someone took a black Sharpie and literally drew around the breasts. "LOOK, here are my BREASTS!" it seems to scream.
I thought this top was bizarre.

What was also bizarre was the dressing area of the sample sale. Now, sample sales are pretty basic affairs. They have great stuff but it's all just on those basic metal rolling garment racks and usually in some empty rented space. It's certainly no department store or boutique experience. There's not always a dressing area, although they often set one up with mobile screens, mirrors, etc. This sample sale was particularly haphazard, with cheap full=length mirrors propped here and there that still had their price stickers and some cardboard descriptor on them "FULL LENGTH MIRROR $12.99" and such. One end of the dressing area was visible from the street.
There were women prancing about in their raggedy, unmatching underthings with ill- fitting thongs burrowing up their butts. Krystal and I, being a bit more modest, kept to our own side of the dressing area and kept our pants on while trying on dresses.
I nodded toward the other women and told Krytal that's why I always tell her to wear nude thong panties under boyshorts and a nude camisole when going shopping. You never know when you're going to need to avoid the dressing rooms, or not find dressing rooms, and want to try things on semi-publicly!

We ended up buying nothing. Such is the way of sample sales: they're hit-or-miss. We certainly both passed on the Boob Outline top, despite the nice price.

The Candy Dish

There's nothing more amusing at a dull job than setting out a candy dish and watching ones coworkers. It's way more fun than trying to keep a desk plant healthy in the artificial office light, more fun than killing a betta or goldfish softly in some inadequate office fishbowl. When I worked at a dot.com a few years ago, I sat next to the candy dish person, who actually was on Weight Watchers, was overweight, and who seemed to derive great pleasure from watching people come to her candy dish. Actually, it was a whole candy drawer. There was a drugstore across the street, and she would go and buy several bags of fun-sized candy bars and dump them with pleasure into her file drawer. It was fun to see the dieters come to the drawer and apologize or make excuses for taking candy, to which Ms. Weight Watchers would reply in this smug, purring voice, "That's what it's there for... enjoy..."

At my previous workplace, I started the candy experiment, but it didn't last long. For one thing, I had to buy organic chocolate, because we were selling organic vegetables and that was our mission. I bought a display box of these mini chocolate squares, which was something like $25. The CEO, whose office was closest to my workspace, wiped the whole thing out within a few days. The funny thing was that she wouldn't talk to me, make eye contact, or anything. She would just glower, come over, snatch some squares and storm away. No exaggeration - I quickly realized that not only could I not afford to keep this woman-beast in chocolate, no one else was getting any of it. I abandoned the candy experiment.

When I started my current job, I started the candy dish again. I started with spicy, chewy ginger candies from GingerPeople, because I like those and they kind of serve the same purpose after lunch as a breath mint. Interestingly, one of the women there, whom I considered a borderline anorexic, liked the ginger candies. She would come by, give me a small smile and sometimes a sad little shrug, and take a candy. She would always dig around a little in the dish before selecting one, which was interesting, because they were all the same.

I started giving other candy to see what else she would eat. Turns out she would eat Starbursts and other sour, fruity candy, but not the cheap chocolate. However, my boss LOVES cheap chocolate, and when I first offered mini Twix she said, "Oh my God. I LOVE TWIX. LOVE THEM," in the same tone one might use when saying, "Oh my God. I love Cristal. Love it". I mean, wow. It's just a Twix.

I love the people who have to tell me a little story or a reason when they take candy.
"For the ride home," or "I just need a little something" are both common. People have a lot of food issues. The normal people come by maybe once every few days and take a piece without comment and just go away and eat it. These normal people are also the same ones who occasionally contribute a bag of candy themselves to the dish. The freakish people are the ones who eat candy all day, or the one who complains bitterly about her weight, makes self-deprecating comments about her body at awkward moments (such as in an all-staff meeting), berates one of the thin girls for working out several times a week (every night she tries to talk this girl out of going to her "outdoor boot camp"), and eats tiny frozen South Beach Diet or Lean Cuisine meals.
She comes to my candy dish and inevitably says something strange like, "I really hate you" while taking candy. It's all very fascinating.