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 |  Chaos is that voice at the end of the day that says, "Bet you didn't see that coming." |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order" ~Douglas Hostadter I imagine that chaos and order are like those Russian nesting dolls, and they fit together to some infinitesimally minute level at which we must just give up ever grasping what lies at the core. Still . . . if I had to bet, my money would be on chaos. "Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish." ~Chuck Palahniuk I know that place well . . . every wrong, stupid, and foolish acre of it! I used to think it was a dead end, or worse, a complete navigational failure, but sometimes that place was exactly were I needed to be. So what does any of this have to do with me, my blog, or the entries that will follow? I don't know, but pull up a chair. I'll invite some chaos, and we'll see what happens. "It's a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful." — Hiromu Arakawa |
| Things are getting intense at work. If we all work really hard, we might meet our April benchmarks by the end of May. The Regional office called today to ask us why we weren't working faster. That's their idea of offering "technical assistance." Well, we'd love to work faster, but their data system is glitchy as hell and hasn't been upgraded to support the work they want us to do. Not to mention the fact that we have to keep redoing work because every few days they change the rules. Whatever. Apparently Harrisburg is getting ready to break out the thumb screws, and waterboards if we don't pick up the pace. Things could start getting a little breezy under the pavilion if you know what I mean. You don't? Well I'll get to that in a minute. For now let me just tell you that we are spread pretty damn thin. At my agency, only 4% of our total operating budget goes toward administrative costs . . . and it's a government agency! I'd challenge you to find many organizations in the private sector with administrative costs that low! We're running on freakin' fumes. There just aren't enough of us to do the job at hand. So why are we all so damn happy? Okay, maybe we aren't happy. Maybe silly is a better word. In fact, maybe it's just a defense mechanism, but we can take some stupid, little thing and float it around the office for weeks laughing about it. Today's example . . . on of the caseworkers was on the phone talking to someone about the annual mental health awareness walk that's happening in the Burg tomorrow. She was explaining to the person that he needed to dress in layers because he would be warm while he was walking, but he might get chilly at the picnic because it gets breezy under the pavilion. Since the caseworkers are all in cubicles, everyone hears everything and she was speaking to someone hard of hearing. I don't know if it was the way she said it, or what, but something about the phrase "breezy under the pavilion" struck us as funny. Not only is it funny, it is the perfect all purpose response to anything. Take as an example Tony's grandfather asking me about my sex life. Imagine if I'd responded with "let's just say it's getting a little breezy under the pavilion." Or "I was really hoping there'd be a stiff breeze under the pavilion by now." Now that would have confounded him.  |
| In my dream, it was Thursday, garbage day, and I was looking forward to throwing out the bodies . . . if only I could find them! That's right folks, I dream about throwing dead bodies out in the trash. Three of them to be precise. More to the point, I dream about misplacing the bodies! Maybe it's because I've been so absentminded lately. It must be a stress thing. Back to the dream. I wasn't responsible for the uh . . . dead-ness. I just needed to get rid of the bodies without anyone finding out. I was the picture of innocence. I didn't put them in the garbage earlier because I was afraid an animal would get after them. I tried to think back which is challenging in a dream. The frustration felt so real. It is one thing to mislay an iPod, or even lose the mate to every shoe I own, but three dead bodies? Where the hell could I have put them? Our freezer isn't nearly big enough. Eventually I found them. I'd stashed them in the car for safe keeping. They were pretty compact, odorless, and concealed in black hefty bags. I pulled them out of the car, horrified that I'd been driving my children around in the same car I hid the bodies in, and with great relief, I tossed them into the can and wheeled it out to the road. I shared this dream with Tony. "Your car?" he said. "Why did you put them in your car? What if I needed to use it to go to the grocery store or something?" It seems that my efforts to conceal three dead bodies might have inconvenienced Tony, so I will strive to be more considerate of my spouse in future dreams. |
| What is the appropriate response when your husbands 90 year old grandfather inquires about your sex life over the potato salad at the mother-in-laws Memorial Day cookout? Really, I want to know because I couldn't come up with anything. We were on the all consuming topic of Tony's kidney stone and subsequent series of medical procedures. Pappy leaned in, patted my hand and said "How's the sex life, Honey? This has to be hard on you too." I'm not sure if the phrase "hard on" was intentional. With Pappy you just never know. |
| "Which part did you like best?" is Zack's new, favorite question to ask. If I laugh at any joke he immediately wants to know "Which part did you like best?" He is trying to understand the world. He is trying in his obsessive, autistic way, to understand why certain things are funny. I'm intrigued by his methods even while I'm annoyed by the constant questions that I usually can't answer. Yesterday, it was just me and Zack. Katie was off with the boyfriend, and Tony was overdoing it by teaching his classes in spite of the fact that he still has a stint.  The dog was bugging me to take him out. I told Zack "I'm going to take Carter outside for awhile, and I'll probably stay outside with him and pull some weeds. If you need me, I'll be out in the backyard." "Okay," he said, "And if you need me, I'll be sitting on the sofa . . . watching TV . . . with this laundry basket on my head ." When I laughed he became very serious. "Was that funny?" "Yes!" "Which part was the funny part?" "All of it together was funny." "But which part did you like best?" he demanded. "The part about the laundry basket. The laundry basket made it funny." At school he will take a poll of the kids in his class asking every one of them "Which was your favorite part?" and recording all the results. The really weird part is that it seems to be working, and he appears to "get" more of the humor now. It has also made me a lot more cognizant and thoughtful about why things seem funny to me. So that's my entry for today. Which part did you like best? |
| I deleted my blog, and I am starting fresh. I hadn't planned to start over so soon, but that too is consistent with the whole chaos theme I've got going here. Actually, the great thing about chaos as a theme is that everything is consistent, and yet at the same time, completely inconsistent, and I'll stop that line of thought right there before we end up back in a Schrödinger's undead cat-in-a-box situation because that is no way to start off a brand new blog. We all remember my thoughtful analysis of blog topics and the number of views/comments received, right? And the truth that was revealed by the stats? ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** So let's forget about cats. Let's focus instead on the points I want you to take away from this blog today: 1. I have a new blog! 2. This blog has a name! 3. Kay can't seem to stay away. She's kind of like the cat in that old campfire song "The Cat Came Back." Anyone remember that one. If you do, go ahead and sing along . . . "But the cat came back the very next day, we thought he was a goner, but the cat came back; it just couldn't stay away." And with that, we've gone full circle back to a cat that may or may not be dead. |
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