G'Day Douche.... Update

Dear readers and sympathizers to my plight, as described below in "G'Day Douche."

Since posting the aforementioned blog, the cube-mate has swapped Australian morning shows for an Australian dance radio station. He left his cube about 3 hours ago, leaving the music blasting unattended.

Just had to share.

G'Day Douche

OK. I've held this in long enough. I hate my cubicle-mate. HATE.

I know, I know, hate is a strong word. But I'm sorry, it's also the only word that is appropriate. And yes, I also know that I have a strong tendency to hate my neighbors, but honestly, I've tried. Hey, it's been over a month since I've talked openly about this, so that has to count for something.

But here it is. My cubicle-mate sucks.

He started the same time as me, which I thought would bond us for life, but he is one of the worst people ever, so forget about it. I will bond elsewhere.

The first week on the job, my cube-mate (who is literally a mate, as he hails from some douchey section of Australia where one's accent sounds like those giant-jawed editors at The New Yorker from Family Guy) was having some phone trouble. He was trying to re-route his international number to his new US line and the company responsible for this was clearly incompetent. Or so he screamed. He spent hours on the phone, berating customer service reps until I had to walk away out of embarrassment.

The worst day was April 13, the Monday after Easter. He was outraged that no one was working on Easter. The man is Godless.

The next offense involves a blatant disregard for personal space. Something that I moved away from New York to avoid.

Picture a giant commune of cubicle space meant for three. Now imagine that the space itself is divided by a wall - making one cube on one side (mine) and two on the other (cube-mate and an empty).

Granted, if I had the extra space on my side of the wall, I would definitely let some files stray into the empty territory, but cube-mate has gone too far.

One day, some files appeared. Benign. The next day, he hung pictures on the cork board of the opposite cube. Brazen. Today, he is rocking a television constantly streaming Australian public access. Bastard.

Not only has he effectively taken over two spaces in the office, he is also blasting Aussie morning shows not two feet from my head. This sir, does not make you awesome. It makes me hate your marmite-eating guts.

But the straw that broke my back (wait, did I just make myself a camel?) happened this morning. There has been a large, framed soccer jersey on the floor in the corner of the office since I started. I has nothing to do with our company, our clients, or our products. It always seemed a bit out of place, but not today. Today, the jersey was handing on the wall. The wall just off our cube section. Hanging there. Like it belonged.

Yes, the jersey is cube-mate’s. Yes, he hung a picture on a shared corporate office wall. A wall that is not even attached to his work space. A random wall. For him.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, BUDDY? Are you that important that you not only need your own television, but your own wall for personal art? Seriously?

I hope you can agree that this hate is justified. And if you can’t, then I will come after you with all my might – by putting my conference calls on speaker phone. Take that Aussie Scum!

Pool Party

I had a horrible cold last week that left me exhausted and drippy. So like a character fresh from a Jacqueline Suzanne novel, I headed to Palm Springs this weekend to dry out.

I have lived in cities all of my adult life and have never owned a car, which means weekend trips always involved some kind of public transportation. Now that we live in the ‘burbs, we have Tony, our trusty steed, who takes us where we need to go. This made for a rather revolutionary weekend away.

It's not that I've never been on a road trip before (see the drive through Florida, Spring Break '98), but I've never been on a road trip with my husband in California.

When I was younger, my parents and I would venture into New York City once a year to see a show and walk 5th Avenue. At the end of the long, exciting day, my mom would come into my bathroom with a bottle of Sea Breeze and some cottonballs, so I could "clean the city off my face." On Friday afternoon, as we drove through freeway after freeway with the windows down, I felt a burning need to "clean the freeway off my face." Something I am sure to get over in a few more months of living amidst the smog.

When we arrived in the desert, I felt very calm and very dry. And after a solid 7 days of nasal discharge, dry was a welcome feeling. We collapsed into a king bed (oh how I've missed you) and slept off a hellish week.

The next morning, we headed to the pool to have our life forces sucked dry by the desert sun. Luckily, no one else was (foolish enough to be) at the pool that day, so witnesses to my new maternity bathing-dress remain at one.

I've never been a big ocean person - after countless wave incidents involving both involuntary nudity and water in my nose - but I am a total pool freak. I love the pool. And I especially love the pool when CinS and I have it all to ourselves.

Please don't get the wrong idea. We don't do anything naughty in the pool. We just like to play games. Games that look really foolish when played by chubby adults.

When I am in better form, I usually initiate a handstand contest and/or back flip contest. CinS enjoys cannonballs. But we always play Mousetrap. Mousetrap is a game where one person (the Mouse) swims through the other person's legs (the Trap) without touching their opponent. With each successful pass, the Trap's legs close a bit, until the Mouse can no longer pass through untouched.

As I'm sure you can imagine, we look ridiculous playing Mousetrap, as we are over the age of 10. But I promise you, it's way more fun than pool volleyball or whatever other "adult" water games you're playing.

CinS and I will be moving out of his parent's house and into our own place in about a month, and our new place has a pool as well. But I doubt that we'll ever be able to replicate the empty, aquatic bliss of our weekend in the desert. We will have to be civilized. We will have to enter the pool from the stairs. We will have to dunk our heads only occasionally, just to cool off. We will have to discuss world politics and art history while listening to Brazilian Jazz.

This blows.

I'm now counting the days until my unborn child becomes a master underwater swimmer so CinS and I can play again, shame free. But there is no way she is taking my Handstand Grand Champion title. No way in hell.

Calling In Sick this Week

Sorry gang, but we're rockin some swine flu this week. Can someone please tell my innards that I am not Mexican, despite my new SoCal diet?

Suburban Adult Age Wasteland Blues

Seeing a lot of my friends on a regular basis has been great, but there's one dude in particular that I've come to realize is awesome-o. Like me, he went off to college and then law school, and then began practicing law in LA while I was in New York. Because of the distance, I hardly saw him, and when I did, he spoke of trendy restaurants in West Hollywood, bars in Santa Monica, late night spots in Downtown, etc. And like me, he seemed to have lost some of the "I don't give a shit about anything" style that growing up in a small beach town provided us.

The transformation has been amazing. He's back in our town, and no longer that dude. Moving from LA back to our hometown has brought out exactly what made him awesome back in the day (yes, I can say "back in the day" because the day I'm referring to is > 10 years ago).

That quality he missed? Not giving a crap about anything.

Two years ago: Brooks Brothers suits, wine bars in LA, brunch at the Viceroy, etc.
Today: Hawaiian shirts, dive bars in our town, and Mexican hole in the wall grub. And of course, the new habit: dipping.

I think dipping (though not for me and quite visceral) is the ultimate form of telling the world that you don't give a shit about anything. Cigarettes kind of convey that, but those are too much effort. What brand to buy, having a lighter on you, etc. All those things take some kind of premeditation.

Dipping, however, does not. Dipping involves shoving some tobacco between your gums and lower lip, and spitting shit into some kind of receptacle. The reason it works so quickly is because the tobacco contains very small pieces of fiberglass, which serve to cut your inner lip so as to deliver the tobacco into the bloodstream more quickly -- and man does it work. Several friends in college dipped, and one of my roommates in law school would dip all the time. (So much so that random bottles of Gatorade half-filled with spit would loiter his room -- maybe they were souvenirs from a particularly good dip sesh?). But unlike those guys, my friend here in LA dips with the right accouterments that convey that he doesn't care, and more importantly, dips openly in public, often at well-lit establishments like the grocery store or while taking his newborn for a walk in her stroller.

He dips while we're playing softball (which, given his old school grey baseball pants and general attitude, makes him gnarly).

He dips while he's running errands around town, picking up diapers for his newborn (radical).

He dips whenever and wherever he pleases, and lets everyone know (by virtue of all the spit on the sidewalk) just what's up.

And last weekend, while at a fancy bar in Santa Monica to celebrate the engagement of some friends (the kind of bar where the dudes behind the bar dress in 1930's era shirts, ties, and vests and call themselves "mixologists" and charge $14 for a rum and a coke [see, e.g., Tailor in Soho, Employees Only in the West Village, and a host of other bars in New York I've never heard of or could never get into.] [see also name-dropping bars in former city you lived in = douchebag; as is using bluebooking format to make side points within a blog]).

While we were all trying to be mature and sip our beverages (by the way, some dude called me a wuss for drinking a Manhattan [b/c of the maraschino cherry in it], so I ordered him one and watched his face cringe as he tried to swallow down the heavy pour of Jim Beam rye that I insisted the TV-extra-wearing-a-shirt-and-tie-come-mixologist put in there -- don't heckle a fat dude with chest hair drinking brown liquor, chances are his drink is legit), my friend decided that this party at an upscale bar was the best time to bring out his tin of Skoal and began crushing Bushmills in one hand, while dipping into the other.

And then it hit me? Is this how he has dealt with becoming a father? I've heard that new dads under 35 often do things to rage against the machine, that is, to remind themselves that they are not completely settling down (although in reality they are). And by "I've heard that new dads under 35...." I mean I just made that up for the convenience of my point.

So, for him, shoving fiberglass and tobacco into his mouth and spitting brown chaw all over the place lets him know that he still is a degenerate at heart. For others, maybe a new car or an alcohol habit. For me, probably a buttload of neon.

In the end, with a baby on the way, men have to find something to release the anxiety of becoming a new parent. Ladies get the camaraderie of other new mothers, the support of their own mothers, mothers in law, and friends, and society's love of a newborn. That is how they cope.

For men, apparently all you get is a tin of Kodiak or Skoal, and if you like, a cup to spit it all into.

Stark Raving Mad

Now that we have landed in California, CinS has decided to mix things up a bit by growing some facial hair. He was working on a full beard until I complained, and 2 weeks ago, he picked me up from work wearing the following: baseball cap, metallic aviators, Iron Man Goatee.

Yes, my husband is channeling Tony Stark. And for some reason, he thinks this is an awesome look.

In case you aren't as well-versed in comic facial hair as we are, let me attempt to describe the Iron Man Goatee before you cheat and look down at the provided photo.

The IMG is one part groomed mustache, in the Paul Newman from Road to Perdition style - that is, with space under the nose. This is to maximize efficiency while sneezing.

Next, there is a clear space between the mustache sides and the chin hair. No connector. On the chin, we've got some hyper-sculpted fuzz in the shape of a black widow, with some sweet Puerto Rican hair lines extending outward and upward (but don't connect!) to make it a full goatee.

I have tried to explain to CinS that the IMG does not occur in nature and that Robert Downey Jr. was likely wearing a piece. He does not believe me.

To his credit, CinS did create an almost perfect IMG using nothing more than a $20 razor and good, old-fashioned determination. The IMG lasted about 3 days until we had to go to dinner with friends... in public.

His ultimate goal was to keep the IMG, but move over one misguided PR hair line about 2 inches. This involved growth. And precision. I suggested he create a Stark Stubble to allow him to grow out the critical line hair, while not looking like an unkempt gorilla. The result was palatable.

But then CinS got greedy.

He decided to "clean up" the IMG in some areas other than the chin. Namely, under the nose. Quickly, the IMG went from Tony Stark to Antonio Starnandez. Horrifying.

The moral of the story is this. The lifespan of your average IMG is about 3 days, or until you need to shave. It seems like an impossible task to carve out the perfect IMG in the first place, but once you're there, it's only half the battle. A few short days later, the razor that was once your friend, turns into some giant robot who is really mean and filled with Jeff Bridges. Come on, you know what I mean.

Cats Rock

All my adult life, I've wanted a dog. A small, puffy, stupid dog that would sit in my lap and love me. My dog would be named after an elderly Jewish man, like Morty or Saul.

My dog would likely be misbehaved, like all small dogs, but he would not be a yappy barker. He would just be adorable. He would wear sweaters in the winter, but not rainboots. Those dog rainboots are asinine.

Although CinS hates small dogs in any form, he particularly hates Pomeranians (my ideal best friend) because of Blade Trinity. Although, after many hours of compelling logic, I have successfully convinced my husband that vampire Pomeranians are merely a tool of Wesley Snipes imagination, the small dog will still have no place in our lives.

For a while, I was sad. But since living next door to a virtual small dog park, and now moving to a neighborhood saturated with small dogs, I may have to agree with CinS.

In my almost 3 weeks of living in LA, I have been awakened by dogs barking every freaking day. The worst culprits are the three small dogs living across the street. They hang out on the upstairs deck, barking their faces off and ignoring CinS's chants to jump. But there is a new dog in town, and she is causing a ruckus.

On paper, this new dog is right up my ally. She is small, fluffy and is named for my grandmother's (human) best friend, Mildred. But in reality, I'm about to go all Michael Vick on this little princess.

Mildred was up the other night at 3AM, barking in the yard. She was barking for about 10 minutes before her owner decided to "intervene." I was completely unaware that the best way to handle a barking dog in the middle of the night is simply to scream out an open window, repeatedly, for 20 minutes. "Mildred! Mildred! MilDRED! Mildred! For the love of God, Mildred!" Totally effective, sir.

This went on for a good 45 minutes, until Mildred's owner got out of bed to take care of his dog. The whole time I was awake, I kept thinking about that scene from the totally underrated Tom Hanks flick, "The Burbs."

Do you remember the part when Tom Hanks' dog is digging by the fence because the neighbor's yard is riddled with corpses? I do. And it made me wonder what Mildred was so riled up about. It was probably a dead bird or a mouse or something, but wouldn't it be awesome if the reason our neighbors have such kick-ass orange trees is due to some natural fertilizer? Radical.

Mildred just may save us all.