Tag Archives: funny

On being “too efficient”

30 Jan

I pride myself on being efficient. Sometimes to a fault.

I once tried to insert the metallic sun-screen in the windshield of my car before I had finished parking.

You would think I would learn, but that desire for efficiency is a MONSTER, I tell you.

And so it was that – at 6am – I decided to combine two “not so fun” tasks in an attempt to create efficiency and get a jump on my day.

Dressing to exercise, I went into the bathroom and started coloring my hair. One of the reasons I do it at home is (in addition to being cheap) that I can’t stand the idea of sitting in a salon for an extra hour while waiting for it to process. At home, I can generally knock it out in 40 minutes, including the 30 minutes the color actually needs to sit on my hair. But those 30 minutes when it’s sitting? Feels like such a waste of time.

So this morning, in my stroke of brilliance, after applying the color and setting the timer for 30 minutes, I got on my bike and dialed up a 25 minute Peloton ride. I mean, if I have to sit around for 30 minutes anyway, I might as well knock out a workout, right?

I was feeling pleased with myself until around the 8 minutes into the ride, when “my collarbones started to glisten” (which is the Peloton instructor’s delicate euphamism for “started sweating like a pig”). I wracked my brain: does my HEAD sweat? I honestly couldn’t remember. I knew my FACE got sweaty, but I wasn’t sure about my head.

Compulsive as I am, I decided to finish the workout, come what may.

I soon had confirmation that my head does, in fact, sweat, and without a mirror, I found myself hoping that what was trickling ever so gently down my forehead was simply sweat, and nothing more.

Workout complete, I went to shower and rinse the color out of my hair. I stopped to look in the mirror. Looking back at me was Rudi Giuliani.

I shuddered, feeling something akin to empathy for the man. I might not like him or respect him. In fact, I might think he deserves to do long, hard time in prison. But for once, I teetered on the brink of understanding some tiny sliver of his brain. Because in those dark veins of dye running down his forehead on that press conference, I finally understood that I had caught a glimpse of a fellow Efficiency Queen.

And now I’m thinking back to every time I’ve told a client that “a strength over-done becomes a weakness.” As it turns out, efficiency isn’t always a desirable thing.

Just ask Rudy.

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Oh Lady Dum-Dum.

21 Aug

Back in 2020, the year that will live in infamy for all it unleashed on us, my cat Miss Moneypenny died unexpectedly. At the height of the pandemic, Alan and I were living like hermits and not seeing anyone, so she was my primary source of companionship most days. Combined with the fact that she was an awesome cat – friendly, chatting, easy going, snuggly – losing her left a big hole in my world.

So I did what pretty much every expert will tell you NOT to do: I rushed out and adopted myself another cat, precisely 30 days later. Based on only two data points, I believed that torties were the sweetest breed of cat, so I went on Petfinder and found one that had just been rescued from a kill shelter in North Carolina and was being fostered in Arlington. She looked very similar to Miss Moneypenny, but – at only 7 lbs – about 3/4 MMP’s size.

Because this was peak-pandemic, there was no opportunity to meet the cat before adopting. Instead, I got to “zoom” with her one time, then I showed up with a carrier and the next thing I knew, this little terrified cat was mine. She spent most of the first week flattened between the wall and my desk, only sneaking out to eat and use her litterbox at night when I was asleep.

This was the opposite of how Miss Moneypenny arrived on the scene – she had jumped out of her carrier and straight onto my bed, purring and friendly. This new cat quickly let me know that there is no such thing as a “replacement” pet.

The good news: by the end of her first week, the new cat had warmed up to me and was – while still very skittish and prone to wedging herself behind my desk when I wasn’t around – very snuggly. The bad news? We hadn’t yet landed on a name for her. Alan and I had very different thoughts. Artemis. Diana. Pancake. Nancy Drew. Ramona Quimby. Nipsey Hussle. I’ll let you guess which selections were mine.

In the end we – I – went with Ramona Quimby because, like her namesake, the cat was pesky and a bit prone to trouble. If a rose by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet, then I now worry that I may have hexed myself when naming her, because Ramona is quite a little handful.

For starters, she’s a one-person cat. While Miss Moneypenny was a friend to anyone she met, Ramona Quimby only has eyes for me. She follows me around and sleeps under my chin, but if another human – except Alan – enters my house, she quickly retreats to hide in the closet. She might warm up (barely) over time, but at best she tolerates other people, and more often hides from them. She’s made an exception for Alan, but we think that’s only because he feeds her when I travel. She might grudgingly allow him a few pets, but it’s equally possible that she will pee on his pillow to let him know she is not thrilled by his presence.

I KNOW!

Anyone who has visited my house knows I pride myself on keeping things tidy and having floors clean enough to eat off. So how do I reconcile that with having CAT PEE ON MY BED?! Well, I’ll be honest. Initially I established a three-strike rule and threatened to return her to the rescue agency where I’d gotten her. But that felt like conscripting her to eventual euthanasia and she really was a sweet cat. So instead, I bought a waterproof mattress cover + pillowcases and rationalized that most people have to deal with children peeing the bed (often frequently and in the middle of the night!) so what is an occasional accident by an otherwise very sweet (and mildly neurotic) cat?

I KNOW. My friend Susie tried to convince me to rename her Lady Dum-Dum, but I honestly wasn’t sure whether she was talking about Ramona or ME.

So here we are, almost three years later. Ramona Quimby is a very sweet companion who only rarely pees on the bed. (Honestly, that’s probably how I’ll describe Alan one day, assuming our relationship lasts another couple decades!)

I share all of this as context for my next post, which – by way of foreshadowing – I’m considering titling:

  • A No-Good, Terrible, Very Bad Idea
  • Dogs Are a Bridge Too Far
  • Whelp. That Didn’t Go So Well.

Or, if I want to eliminate any suspense, may just be titled:

  • Cat Meets Dog, Cat Shits Herself and Hangs from the Newly-Replaced and Now-Damaged Window Treatment

On second thought, maybe I don’t even need to write that post. If you’ve seen one cat evacuating its anal glands while launching itself vertically, you probably can finish that story.

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Totally dropped that ball…

10 Mar

Screen Shot 2016-03-07 at 6.55.33 AM.png

Imagine you’re planning a trip to Europe with a colleague. You’ve put together to do lists and have reminded your colleague to authorize her bank card for overseas use and make sure her passport is still valid. “Check the date,” you tell her, “because you technically can’t travel on a passport that is set to expire in the next six months.”

You continue on your merry way, booking arrangements and finalizing your agenda. Then, four weeks before your trip, you wake up at 3am on a Saturday, staring at the ceiling, haunted by a question. “When does MY passport expire?” you ask yourself, a question you should’ve considered months ago with the trip was an initial glimmer in the back of your brain.

You calmly rise from bed and approach your safe, reassuring yourself. “I’d never let my passport expire. I’m sure it’s fine,” you repeat as you tap in the code. The door springs open and you retrieve your passport. You open it and see the date of expiration: January 2016.

 

NO. WAY.

What then unfolds is a scramble. You’re grateful for the internet because you quickly learn that you can rush a passport renewal for a small fee. You call the passport agency to see if you can get an appointment to do a same-week passport. You learn that unfortunately (fortunately?) you must be traveling within two weeks to warrant the kind of desperate service that results in an in-person interview and passport replacement.

Instead, you’re told you need to go the “expedited processing by mail” route. It makes you nervous to entrust your passport to the USPS and a post office box. You imagine all the scenarios in which you could be worse off than you currently are: your application could get lost en route to Philadelphia; it could fall into a crevice in the processing center and never get renewed; your new passport could get lost in the mail on its way back to your; it could get stolen from the lobby of your apartment building if the envelope doesn’t fit in your mailbox.

All the scenarios you imagine end with you not having a passport, unable to go on the trip you’ve been meticulously planning. You imagine telling your colleague that she’s flying solo. You imagine her eyes widening like saucers as she realizes she will be single-handedly leading ten days of training for 60 people.

You decide not to tell anyone about your predicament until you have your new passport safely in-hand.

You sit back and wait for your passport to arrive, so you start writing a blog post to bide your time…

Screen Shot 2016-03-07 at 6.52.34 AM

I suppose it could be worse…

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This post is as random as my cat’s stomach.

12 Aug

Image Source: http://weknowmemes.com/2013/02/let-me-tell-you-a-story/I went to Boston last week for work. I usually travel a lot, but haven’t been on the road since I got Miss Moneypenny. Normally, Alan would stay with her and make sure all was well, but he got called to NYC himself last week, so I scrambled to find a sitter. I even went so far as to contact a professional pet sitting place to see if someone could stop in… but then my friend Alison hopped to the rescue.

We were at dinner a few days before my trip and I mentioned that I needed a sitter. “I’ll do it,” she offered.

“No,” I said, “It’s for multiple days…”

“That’s fine,” she said. I wish I were that laid back. She hadn’t even MET Miss Moneypenny when she volunteered to cat-sit.

Her friend Shawn piped up, “Careful! Ask her what happened when she cat-sat for me!”

I looked at Alison expectantly. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said. “How was I supposed to realize the cat and dog had separate bowls?” Turns out, she’d emptied the cat’s bowl into the dog’s bowl and only fed the dog for the week. In her defense: it’s not like there wasn’t food around. If the cat got hungry enough, she could’ve snacked from the dog’s bowl.

Fast forward three days from hearing this story… There we were with fresh sheets on my bed so Alison could house/cat-sit and play with Miss Moneypenny until Alan returned from New York.

The report cards (which arrived by text) were positive regarding Miss Moneypenny. (“She’s so sweet!”) But not so positive when it came to my upstairs neighbor. (“Dude. Is your neighbor a GIANT? Does he LEAP instead of WALK?”)

Oh crap. Forgot to caution her to bring sleeping pills to cancel out McStomperson.

NOT my cat. But note the tummy.

NOT my cat. But note the saggy tummy.

Alan arrived back from NYC in time to relieve Alison for the last day. He called me with an odd question. “Have you ever noticed, when you’re behind or above Miss Moneypenny, and she runs somewhere in a hurry – like to her food bowl…”

I knew exactly where he was going with this, so I cut him off. “Yes! You’ve seen her fupa!”

Alan started laughing. “EXACTLY. What is going on there? Her stomach swings like a gate from side to side when she runs!”

(If you don’t know what a fupa is, it stands for “fat upper pubic area” and is generally used to describe loose fat that hangs down into a person’s pants somewhere between their stomach and their crotch. As it turns out, cats can have them too, even though they don’t wear pants.)

Time-out: My sister just informed me that “fupa” is not a technical term. Apparently I shouldn’t treat UrbanDictionary as a legitimate reference source. Alicia says the actual term I’m looking for is “pannus.” (See? This blog is educational. Which means classy. You’re welcome.)

Anyway. The moral of the story is: Miss Moneypenny  survived the week without me. And you have to love a cat whose stomach waves in greeting… almost as much as I love this photo:

This has NOTHING to do with this post, but absolutely slayed me.

This has NOTHING to do with this post, but absolutely slayed me.

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When ignorance really is bliss.

3 Aug

Whenever I travel, I try to read a book set where I’m visiting. Usually I lean toward a novel and supplement it with guided walking tours so I can get a blend of fact and fiction. In preparation for my upcoming trip to Australia, I picked up something I read years ago, a non-fiction travelogue by Bill Bryson called In a Sunburned Country.

I remembered enjoying it (from the comfort of my couch in DC), so I thought it would be a nice primer.

WRONG.

Oh sure, it’s as funny and educational and telling as I remember. The problem? Bryson is fixated on takes great joy in regaling readers with tales of all the dangerous/poisonous creatures that inhabit the land Down Under. As someone who is a bit of an arachnophobe, this is NOT helpful.

(Separately, what does it mean that I’ve managed to weave phobias into EVERY post this week? I’m scaring myself. Is that a phobia too?)

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