Strolling

I think I am getting into the habit of writing these things right before I leave for work in the morning and therefore giving the impression that I am always either at work or thinking long, dreary thoughts about work. And that is not the case. I often think long dreary thought about a number of topics. Currently I am thinking a couple of long dreary thoughts about buying houses. (I don’t know if I have mentioned that we are considering buying a house on here yet; if not, surprise!) It’s a shocker to find that after years of looking at tiny one-storey houses that you feel oddly seduced by a two-storey house. Woe to the real estate agent that must conduct us to a 750 square-foot house and a 1,200 square-foot house in the same day.

But I am also thinking dreary thoughts about the feeling this morning when I opened my kitchen door to let the dog out. It was about 7:40 and cool out, but the coolness had a feeling of brevity – I could feel the insane hotness looming just beyond the shade. I felt it when I opened the bathroom window this morning and when I turned on the dusty fan last night. Summer is coming in all of its sweaty, grimy, glory. And when it gets here I’m going to take off my sneakers and be cranky until it retreats.

I was thinking about summer the other day when I was sitting in my car on my lunch break. It was windy outside, but warm enough in the car and after I’d eaten my lunch I felt like taking a nap. To distract myself I watched the cars and the people trouping past my windshield. First, there were a whole lot of them (both people and cars) and they all seemed so shiny in the sun – hubcaps and steel bumpers were reflecting the glare off of reflective plastic strollers, bug-eye sunglasses, and embellished flip-flops.

It wasn’t like the many lunch breaks that I spent in my car during the winter. Since I’ve been working retail the weather has been mostly daunting; people fled from their cars to the Baby Gap overhang with newspapers and purses held over their heads. Watches were checked, lunch hours were maximized and people kept their plump calves and boney feet concealed in weather-appropriate clothing.

But last week people weren’t just shopping, they were making a g.d. day of it. They were strolling and worse yet, they were strolling with strollers. I remembered, idly, that when I was a young teenager my friends and I used to convince our parents to drop us off at the outlet mall for the sheer change of scenery. We would wander, penniless, from place to place admiring toe-socks and platform sandals. Sometimes we pooled our money and bought matching Sailor Moon shoelaces.

In light of this, I’m pretty sure that it is going to be a real ugly summer.

And have a nice day.

Because it is early and I’m still waking up, I’ll start off with some preliminary small-talk. The weather today is rainy, after weeks of sunshine, and I am pleased with the shift, excepting some small concern over my dog and the strawberry plants that some guy I live with planted in the backyard. I’m concerned over the dog because she is a demure old lady with no fondness for getting her feet wet but she will have to spend her day (dog-like) outside because I am off to work in a few minutes.

I worked the weekend but I didn’t work yesterday, so in some absurd way this is like the beginning of my week. That’s one of the hardest things for a schedule-oriented person like me to wrap their head around: when you aren’t working a 9-5, M-F job, the week is permeable. It’s virtual heartbreak to my little compulsory-schooled, office-job-since-17 heart.

The whole thing is a little weird, though, when you consider the frequency with which people who invariably work most of the weekends ask each other what their weekend plans are. I have even heard corny “TGIF” lines being exchanged by people who will report, sensible shoes in hand, at 10 a.m. the next morning for an 8-hour shift. I like to think that this is less about being delusional and more about relying on conversational scripts to get through the day. Referencing the weekend is like a “Nice weather we’re having” for the young and fast set.

As a generally awkward person, I love having these scripted conversations. I love asking people what their plans are, how their weekend was, what they are doing for lunch, and remarking with special casualness on how many hours of work remain in the day. I prefer to let other people introduce emotionally strenuous topics of conversation in the workplace; I don’t want to seem presumptuous. (I did break this rule to express, unprovoked, my distress at having to work during the Kentucky Derby and my intention to wear an oversized black hat in protest and mourning. No wonder people think that I’m so awesome.)

The common and unfortunate side effect of these work-time scripts is that they start to be instinctive, especially when your workplace has a set of mandatory phrases for dealing with customers. In the past when I have worked in phone-heavy positions, I used to answer my cell phone with the whole spiel – giving my name and department and asking people if I could help them with something. (Again, no wonder people think I’m so awesome.)

Now that I work in a place where I largely thank people and greet them, I find myself compelled to shout a cheerful hello to any opening door. I almost bit my tongue trying to keep myself from bursting forth in my singsong voice at a coffee shop last week, as the doorbell there was reminiscent of the ding-dong of the door at my workplace. The whole thing was making me mighty nervous, but then maybe that was because I’d been too awkward to amend my coffee order to make it decaf.

Since we are on the topic of work-related humiliations, I’ve been meaning to discuss how I find myself responding to any “Thank you” with a swiftly executed “Thank you! Have a nice day!” and by looking around frantically for my copy of the receipt. This is a particularly embarrassing reaction when made to someone that you are going to be seeing regularly, as it tends to come off a bit…dismissive. Also it comes off a bit weird. And probably it makes me seem just a little bit awesome.

Some American Shit

Dear guy-ahead-of-me-while-I-drove-to-work,

Hi. You don’t know me but I was behind you at about 1:15 this afternoon, headed south on Folsom avenue. You might have caught a glimpse of me in your rear-view mirror with the dice hanging from it, though perhaps not. I try to maintain a very polite distance from other cars. Hatchback and oversized sunglasses? Distinctly hunched driving posture? Yes, that would be me.

Well, sir (and I hesitate to apply this term because your age was so hard to determine from so far away and so strange an angle), I am sorry that I hurried past you as soon as the road opened up to two lanes. The moment that my car hurdled passed yours I realized the implied insult of my actions. When a person who has been following another takes the first opportunity to pass, the sideways glances exchanged are rarely pleasant ones.

I just wanted to clarify that I meant no disrespect. If you felt admonished by my haste, if the sight of my little green car puttering weakly past your window brought you any embarrassment, or if this last indignity was the straw that broke your Model-A’s back, I apologize.

I understand what you were trying to do, guy. You were out driving your classic car in the sunshine on a Sunday afternoon and you stuck your arm out of the window. You had dice on the rear-view, and I respect that. You were probably listening to some righteous jams and you felt no need to hurry. Hell, you were on a Sunday drive and that’s some American shit right there.

I’m sorry that some schmuck in a green hatchback had to pass you at the first opportunity; that I had to be the jerk-wad reminding you that your tranquility is as outdated as your vehicle and twice as likely to break down. I didn’t mean to be a jerk, but I was on my way to the outlet mall to slap on my lanyard and sell some sneakers. That also is some American shit, but with a difference emphasis.

I'm intimidated by all kinds of bikers

Please be amazed, devoted followers, I’m about to write something in (and about) a coffee shop. I know that I have harped on about this topic too often and that I have – on several occasions, I think – vowed to never do it again. But I can lie as often as I want; this is my blog and I do as I please here.

I’ve been writing for the last two days in the biker bar of all coffee shops…biker as in 10-speed. After months of Starbucks mothers and indignant hippies at the Coffee Republic, I have finally found a coffee shop frequented by mobile people, none of whom want to stick around inside the shop. That’s where I come in. It’s true, I am a little ashamed since I haven’t been on my bike in months and when I did bike it was in the stately commuter way, not the hardcore/spandex fashion.

Regardless, it is quiet here and although there is Christmas music playing it isn’t too loud and the employees seem annoyed by it as well. The chairs aren’t all that comfortable but the internet is free.

Mostly the people who frequent this place make me wish that I was more into nature than I am. They are all talking about how many miles they’ve ridden and they drink the regular drip coffee. Last night while at work I contemplated buying some hiking boots (they were a good deal and I was cold) and then I forced myself to stop and contemplate when I was likely to wear them.

Sure, I could wear them stomping around town, leaving large muddy tracks all around the grocery store. But it was unlikely that I would be out in nature with them, hiking around and getting them properly broken in. It is also not likely that I will ever ride a bike for several miles...but I don't mind stealing wifi like I will someday.

Tailgating is the same as shoving

Here’s an odd compellation of thoughts for today.

The first is a compellation within a compellation: a combo of my classic sexism and passive aggressive driver’s rage. This week I have been driving over each morning to feed a dog that my beau and I are monitoring, and I mention this only as an excuse to say that I have been cooking a special meal of fried beef hearts daily for this dog-faced dog.

Anyway, so in my drives I have noticed a disproportionate number of aggressive tailgaters, which is not surprising since I think that I have blogged before about the mean drivers in the higher income neighborhoods and snooty shopping centers (fountains, so many fountains) in this area. What was surprising about this particular crop of tailgaters is that they were distinguished looking older men in fancy cars. I’m not so removed from the wonders of Hollywood that I don’t understand that 50 is the new 40 and that business men will behave as frat boys in spite of their silvery manes, especially when they have fancy foreign cars. But these old men were driving (lattes in hand, the sissies) as though they also ate beef hearts and greens for breakfast every morning.

Here’s where the sexism comes into this: I find this more offensive than when some girl with bug-eye sunglasses and a graduation tassel hanging on her rear-view mirror tailgates me. Tailgating is like shoving, only more cowardly because you tailgate people that you won’t dare shove in real life. I will continue to be sexist and offended when an old fellow who should know better goes around shoving people who are the lady-like two-door hatchbacks of humanity.

Other thoughts…I thought that I had other thoughts when I started typing this…

Okay, well, on then to reflections on the art of retail. That’s right, retail. I am doing it and I won’t suffer any flack from anyone about the supposed dignity of the college degree. Degrees, I wager, have slightly less dignity these days than old men. So, appeal to me with your questions about sensible shoes and not a damn thing else. My early prognostic is that retail is like working in an office, but with more bending.

Oh, now I remembered my other thought. It’s one that I’ve been having for a few days but since I had that weird rash of posts about coffee shops I decided to defer mentioning it until I had some variety. In my tour of local coffee shops I noticed that old ladies often have coffee dates with all of the whimsy and leisure of being retired.

These ladies meet up to talk about their families and their health, two topics that would annoy me in the mouths of the midday Starbucks mom’s but I find perfectly acceptable in this instance. The difference is that these old ladies speak quietly. So I guess that the theme for today is that old men are losing it, but old ladies are keeping it real.

Final thought, and then I’m done. I am, despite my high handed statements, back in a coffee shop. I can’t help it! At home I was tempted to try to give myself a Gibson girl hairstyle; I needed to get out of there if I was going to get anything done today.

And for punishment of my hypocrisy, the music in here is like a twang-y acoustic death-match between Dave Mathews and some lady-loser of the same genre. Ack.

Also, I think it might be in Spanish.

Woe is capitalism

I have become (quite freakishly) a consumer. And I tell you, becoming a consumer after years of skimping and hating consumers is a lot more stressful than becoming a consumer directly after entering adulthood as a natural result of a soulless capitalistic upbringing and the miracle of credit cards. It's more stressful because years of hating consumers now translates into years of mislead poverty and a desire to buy satchels that you imagine Sylvia Plath would buy.

I cannot help myself. I suppose it is disgusting (and probably just plain wrong) to imply that I am flush with dollars, but by my own very diminished standards am well set. Thus are the compensations for selling your soul to corporate America for the bounty of a cubicle and a salary. (To be clear, I am still most securely in the lower middle class bracket, it just so happens that I was whatever half of lower middle class is before.)

I conferred with my domestic-pal about this in a worried way. When we first started hanging around I was very broke, and dressed for most dates in my best (only) black sweater and the cloth Mary-Janes that I purchased online and realized too late smelled like the sweatshop they undoubtedly hailed from. I was concerned that he might think that I was being corrupted by relative success, and that maybe he liked when I only had 5 main shirts to rotate through.

Though he has assured me otherwise, I still worry about myself as a consumer. People might think that I am trying to be "fancy" a lifelong fear of mine.

Also I worry that I am mercenary for being so concerned over money. Last time I checked, mercenaries went out of style with pirates (aka whenever kiddies started loving whatever it is they love now).