Avoidance.

It’s ‘round about this time in the week wherein I absolutely cannot take my job anymore.

Here are some common work avoidance strategies I take:

1) I drag my feet on the way into work. This was a bit more thrilling today, as I forgot my breakfast at home, so called a woman I work with and told her I would be “a little late.” Too bad “a little late” was only 8:36, instead of the usual 8:30. Stupid apartment and it’s nearness to my job.

2) I spend about an hour in the morning “catching up on the news.” Chicago Tribune is first. God forbid some poor downtrodden individual on the South Side got stabbed or caught in a drive-by overnight, and I missed it.

Then I read CNN, then the BBC. I like to start local and end global, you see. After I've gotten a good inkling of how screwed up the world is, I usually end by looking at People's daily celebrity photos, just to really bring my brain back to the rotting cesspool that I am comfortable with it being most of the time.

3) I check my daily blog reads. Bev will usually have her daily musing already up for me to check out. Except for that one time last week when she was late - because she was visiting with her mom and cousins - and I had to sit on my hands so as not to be one of many of her loyal readers who emailed her, to make sure she wasn’t trapped under something heavy. See, that’s what happens when you blog every single day for seven years: you take a break, and the online community thinks you’re dead.

4) Lately, I’ve also been writing in my journal. Not this journal, but the actual journal, filled with waywayway more phobias and laments than I could let the Internet in on, including but not limited to:
- wanting to be more creative in my everday life
- as part of that, wanting to take classes to learn how to sew
- thinking that I’m a bad mother to my dog and cat some days
and,
- getting all “woe is me” about that Cadbury Crème Egg I ate last night.

Believe me, you would probably just need to lay your head down on the ground wondering how I make it through the day if I let you read any of THOSE entries.

Usually I throw a little watercolor or two (or hundreds) on to the pages of my journal, for visual stimulation. And, also, because I can’t seem to write on a page unless it’s decorated in some way, even if that just means being crinkly from the watercoloring that’s on the page behind it. The thought of a blank piece of paper fills me with terror, and I could probably (and probably have) read into that as being another reason I should pay for weekly therapy, but whatever, for now I'll just decorate the pages.



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After I have done one (or all) of these things at work, THEN I can begin to do something work-related. About five minutles later, I am bored enough to rinse and repeat the above list.

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Because it’s SO fitting that I follow that rant on my attitude towards what I do to pay the bills, I feel I must mention that yesterday was Secretary’s Day, or "Administrative Professionals Day," or any of these names that you would like to call it.

So, for the fourth year in a row, I spent the day being praised for doing a job that I don’t particularly care for and feel that I am too smart for, thus making me only marginally good at it, because I really hate it so much.

However, it pays the bills. Boy howdy, does it pay the bills.

Anyways, it was nice of my higher-ups to do something for me, but what really what I'm getting at is that it's just so embarrassing to get cards, gifts, accolades and a breakfast celebration to honor a profession I don't want to be in. I want to say something, you know, like: Please. Rub it in more that I had a foolhardy major in college that got me nowhere, and went down this professional road because I needed health insurance.

Sheesh.

The tulips were lovely, though. Even the two-headed mutant one.



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Finally, because I feel the need to spew it’s cuteness all over the Internet, delight if you will in this little polar bear’s butt.



Sorry I couldn't get him facing the right way - he was too busy playing with a piece of hay to pay any attention to the 600 people watching him.

This was taken last Sunday, probably the most beautiful day in all of 2007 (and Earth Day, to boot), when my family and I went to the Brookfield Zoo. There was also this baby, too:



Although, her cuteness was cut in half by the zoo feeling the need to show a video of her live birth, back in January. A live birth involving a very leggy little thing, splooging out of her mom’s rear, covered in afterbirth. And then Mom licks her clean. Just like that. I’m pretty glad that good old soap and water has replaced that last part of birth for us humans.