There's a support group for people who hate their jobs. It's called "Everybody," and they meet at the bar.

So I was looking in my files for my results from one or another of the many personality tests we've done in my group over the years, for reasons too tiresome to go into, and I couldn't find it. I looked under M -- Meyers-Briggs? T -- tests? team meetings? S - StrengthsFinder? W - What Color is Your Brain? R - resources?

No, no, no. Eventually I realized: It was under "H" for "horseshit." Oh, riiiight! I remember now!

In that moment, I was a god - the god of cake - and I was unstoppable.

WERE YOU AWARE …

1) That there is food that doesn't have salt in it, and that these foods don't taste very good? (This profound and provocative observation brought to you by the fact that I had a great soup from the cafe at work yesterday, but it wasn't great until I added four little packets of salt to it.)

2) That Mr. Gleemonex, upon reading #1, will do a full-body cringe and probably dry-heave a time or two, and then have dark thoughts about my blood pressure, made annoying to him by the next thought, which is that my blood pressure is fine? (Genes are a bitch. I eat salt like other people breathe, with no ill effects on the ol' BP; it's the sugar diaBEETus or the poor ol' beat-up liver, not the hypertension, that'll eventually get me.)

3) That my grandboss gave our entire team a lecture yesterday on how she and the other three Senior Directors (on our team of twenty -- also we have one VP, five Directors, four Senior Managers, and two Managers, none of which are me -- we real top heavy up in my group) are "aware" of some " … well, disrespect in how people are treating each other around here," apparently including "sniping and backbiting" and "complaining to each other about people not delivering things they promised and so forth," and that this was "not aimed at anyone in particular here" but that "everyone should be aware" and that "we're not going to tolerate it" because it's "frankly unprofessional," and that she went on in this vein for nearly fifteen minutes, during which I wrote on my agenda in the guise of serious note-taking: "Probably this is related to me and Blue Flame. Also FYI, everyone here is fucking MISERABLE"?

4) That this right here is the funniest goddamn thing I've seen in AGES?

Because the word "purse" makes me feel a little vomity

So as part of Operation: Dress Like a Grown-Up, I went and bought myself a genuine Grownup Lady Handbag. (From a store, not a street vendor.) (For the first time in my bag-purchasing life.)

People, Internets: I am seriously, sincerely not a handbag person. I don’t even like writing the word, much less saying it. And I can’t imagine having more than one of these. But I do like this particular item – it’s more of a shoulder bag, or satchel or something, a dark red leather job from Fossil, big enough to hide a file folder containing my resume and have room left over for my Grownup Lady shoes (a pair of Franco Sarto platform pumps, into which I change when I get to the building, because fuck walking in those things out on the street, and who ARE the chicks who do that? These are costume items, people, not real shoes, christ.)

And but so the real trouble with this Grownup Lady Handbag, besides the fact that I feel like a Grownup Lady impostor carrying it, is that there’s nothing in it and I can’t find anything – voluminous pockets, zippered compartments, side compartments, clasped compartments, vast recesses of nothingness into which disappear things like my wallet, the hand sanitizer, the gum, the giant bullshit sunglasses case. I might could fit a whole person in there and not be able to find him or her.

Also, a couple of unanticipated side effects of this Grownup Lady program:

--It’s like a suit of armor, and it lets me be aggressive in ways I wasn’t before. For instance, my boss CALLED ME UP yesterday, basically to rag on me for being all annoyed and hostile in YET ANOTHER spontaneous one-hour megaproject-related clusterfuck of a meeting Monday, and instead of being apologetic and “Golly gee whiz, Mister, I won’t do that again!”, I'm like, "Yes, I was annoyed, because that meeting was annoying, and I'm sitting in it the whole time thinking about all the work piling up on my desk while I'm in this fucking annoying meeting.” It was awesome.

--It’s causing me to have a mild but pervasive case of The Doubts about what I’m even fucking doing, pouring all this time and effort into this job and getting another job (just like it but which pays more), when what I really should be doing is working on the book I started writing a year and a half ago. It’s a good book. You’d like it. If I finished it.

--I felt like I looked so cute this morning that it put me in a super-good mood and I felt really lucky, like something awesome was just around the corner, so I detoured and bought a lotto ticket. I will let you know whether that nets me the $101 million from the SuperLotto tonight! If I do, I’ll buy you all Grownup Lady handbags.

"And Samir Naga- ... Nagan- ... " "Not-gonna-work-here-anymore!"

It's Either This, Or Start SCREAMING MY FUCKING BALLS OFF In These Meetings: A Selection of Things Scribbled Almost Unconsciously In My Notebook, While Wearing a Very Serious Face, During a Ninety-Minute Impromptu Team Meeting Yesterday

Oh, it's a war, all right.

NO KIDDING

[Drawing of a stairwell eight or nine stories high, with stick-figure person falling down the center]

I ain't get paid weekend money

[heavily circled about fifteen times]

have those conversations IIII/ I

processes [long e] III

respectful IIII

White House IIII/ IIII

[drawing of a stick figure w/dunce cap, and thought balloon saying: fml]

I'm expert at excaping

The irony, of course, is that [REDACTED] is the ultimate corporate-speaker

[someone else's handwriting] omg I have to pee

[drawing of an eye with a fork stuck in it]

"You're comin to the game tonight, aren't ya?" "I have to. I'm pitching."

Awesome Facts About Tim Lincecum

--He wears the same number as Kenny Powers.

--He struck out FOURTEEN BATTERS, allowing only two hits, in a one-run (as in, the only run scored was the one the Giants managed to get) complete-game victory last night.

--He got caught awhile back in the offseason with some herbal jazz tobacco in his car. Everyone was like, "Huh. Noooooo kidding. Timmy likes to blaze? Who knew."

--The other night as the Giants secured their spot in the playoffs on the very last day of the regular season, the reporter chick asked him "Are you ready for your champagne shower?", and he said -- on camera, on live TV and over the PA system in the still-full stadium -- "FUCK YEAH!!!"

--He puts one very strongly in mind of Mitch Kramer, who -- unfortunately for Mitch -- had the misfortune to be the pitcher the night of the last day of school, meaning the seniors knew exactly where to find him.

--This means, of course, that I have a great deal of affection for both and that I'm compelled -- COMPELLED -- to pepper his appearances with "Mitchy Mitchy Mitchy … hope you got more than a jock strap on under there, ya little rat!" and "You're eighteen, right?" etc.

We're ten hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out?

A Random Selection of Things I Remember About Going to Six Flags Over Texas as a Yute

--It would be hot as fuck, no matter what -- you were going to sweat, and you'd try to get cooled off by going in that creepy Spelunker's Cave thing or the Log Flume ride; the former would work for ten minutes, but then by contrast from the air-conditioned dark (with elves) you'd be extra super hot when you got back out into the blasting furnace of the Texass summer, while the latter only netted you a wet T-shirt & shorts and a smell of green water swamp-ass funk for the rest of the day.

--Once I went with CN's family, and they totally did it wrong; instead of the kids running off and meeting back up at regular intervals, we all had to stick together the whole day. Instead of paying too much for lunch at, say, the "Mexico" area, we had to go out to BFE* to some shadeless miserable picnic table off the grounds and eat lousy French's-mustard bologna sandwiches and stuff they brought in a cooler. And we did not get to stay till the place closed. LAAAME.

--From the ages of about eleven to ... probably fifteen, one of my primary must-do's on the list was to get my picture taken in the Olde Tymie Photoe Boothe thing, where you'd pull on a Southern Belle costume that tied in the back and get yer pitcher took, done up all olde-tymie. I had this thing about Gone With the Wind, remember -- yet another of my regrettable obsessions. Oi. And it cost like fifteen dollars, which is a lot of babysitting time, Internets.

--I spent at least one trip fully locked into Fake British Accent mode. I think I was fourteen. It was the only way I could talk to cute boys, and cute must = stupid, because I am pretty sure they bought it.

--I went there on a double date once, with SR and his friend and one of my friends I can't remember who it was. It was fun, but the main thing I remember was that "Should I Stay or Should I Go" (I want to say Big Audio Dynamite?) was apparently on endless repeat on the park sound system.

--When we were about twelve, my friend CD's dad took several of us on Kroger Nite, when the company had rented out the whole damn park, which meant there were like 200 people in the place total, so we packed so many rides into three hours that it felt like we were there for days, we OWNED the place, it was AWESOME.

--The Shockwave was the biggest, baddest ride on the lot. A double-loop roller coaster, blue-painted metal rising up beside the highway, the better to entice young Gleemonex anytime we went anywhere near Arlington. It took me years to work up the courage (and the height), but once I did, there might just as well have been no other structure in the joint. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps -- I want to go to there. Now.

--Probably the most epic trip was when my mom took a gaggle of us (me & CD, my bro and like four of his giant gangly teenage friends) one explosively hot Labor Day weekend (theme: How Many Overheated Un-Sunscreened Human Bodies Can This Park Theoretically Hold? Let Us Find Out!), and despite the fact that we got there when the place opened, the lines were so long we had only actually ridden like three rides by 2:00 p.m., at which point the skies bruised up and then dumped Noah's Fictional Ark-style buckets of thunderous lightning-pocked rain for HOURS. Then we were wet and cold and miserable and Mexico ran out of food and most of the rides were closed for inspection/towel-drying and my bro and his friends disappeared to go to the Night Ranger show in the amphitheater (which had been the point of coming on this day & not another one).

--No matter what, a trip to Six Flags was always, always the absolute single-day highlight of the summer.

------------------------------------------------

*Beyond Fucking Egypt, or, later, Bum-Fuck Egypt. Even churchy kids curse! Sort of!