Crappy Friday

Any week that begins with two Mondays is simply going to end with a crappy Friday. Friday, that day that can do no wrong, can do wrong on a week with two Mondays. The confusion over whether or not it is actually Thursday frustrates the day until the underlying identity crisis erupts taking out passersby like Vesuvius did the citizens of Pompeii.

It will start with a bang, when something large and expensive will break in some manner that will no doubt require replacement rather than simple repair. But it will not stop there. Oh no. You will discover that despite your best efforts to mitigate damage and the insane workout schedule that probably broke said large and expensive (though clearly badly made) exercise machine, the weeks family inspired eating compromises will set you back at least 2 weeks of dieting. You will then find 2 sliver hairs popping out of the top of your head as though they had every right to be there. Dealing with broken equipment also causes delays to the morning that will leave you running out the door 30 minutes late and without your coffee.

On such a day you will receive mandatory meeting invites for every day of the following week that start a full 30 minutes before the time you barely make it in by as it is. On such a Friday you will discover that the plans you made for Saturday night are actually for Friday as you got your dates confused. On a week with two Mondays, it seems, your ability to count escapes you.

The only hope for you is Friday night… Take control. Get a massage and meet up with friends for dinner and drinks afterwards. Though, on the Friday of a week with two Mondays you probably shouldn’t drink as much as you would want to, given the week behind you. Odds are that on such a Friday night you’d get ticketed for drunk driving.

Only forgivable on a Monday

There is a time and place that is appropriate for all things. Even for really annoying things. Things that normally one just shouldn’t do as the inconvenience to others are too great. This time is that Bermuda Triangle of organization and function we fondly call Monday morning. This is a time when everyone’s day is functioning at a similar level of ‘not’ and being held up by ridiculous and infuriating things that other people do is part of the flow.

These are things that are not acceptable on say a Tuesday morning. And yet, with a casual disregard for the reality that it is not in fact Monday, people do them anyway. Things such as:

· Ordering a “triple half caf mocha… um, no make that a double full caf latte, no actually a single caramel macchiato… hmmm… WAIT!! Actually make that a…” in a busy coffee shop first thing in the morning is only forgivable on a Monday.

· Stopping in the middle of the road in busy traffic causing a line of cars to miss the green light at the intersection ahead for no conceivable reason – or even for a conceivable reason – is only forgivable on a Monday. (There is always, in this situation, a line of alternately confused and infuriated morning commuters trying to see through and around the cars ahead in order to determine if someone has in fact just stopped randomly or if there is some kind of obstruction. By the time this is determined, the opportunity to honk has probably passed, which is additionally infuriating. The desire to then get out of the car and slap the silly woman while stuck at the red light is, while understandable, also only forgivable on a Monday.)

· Running late for morning meetings because some silly woman pulled a Monday morning maneuver on the drive in, is only forgivable on a Monday.

· Laptop batteries dying in the middle of taking notes at the morning meeting (starting 10 minutes into the meeting) because the power chord is still in the car is only forgivable on a Monday.

The promise for a week that starts with two Monday mornings seems dire indeed.

Food Autism

I have been accused of food autism. I’m not entirely sure what that would be if it were an actual condition. Perhaps I’m being accused of savant-ism to a certain degree. I would at least like to pretend however that cooking is not my only skill. There is no need to correct me on this matter if I’m wrong.

The ‘food autism’ emerges regularly in conversations lasting more than a few minutes. It also emerges when I have time to think about food or eat food or in any way interact with food. It was at its strongest in London where an hour underground on the way home thinking about what to make for dinner gave great scope for the process. Arriving home I would announce to whichever roommate was about “I had this idea for a dish on the way home” as though it had never happened before.

That said, I think that there is a basic approach to cooking that people miss and makes the whole experience entirely more successful. Begin by imagining flavors. Ginger, garlic, herbs… anything. How they might combine with each other, in what proportions and what was it that was missing? And keep imagining until the combination that tastes exactly right comes clear. Balance the textures and colors. It all has to work together. And more than texture and color and flavor it is also chemistry. Because the combination of what you put together works and binds together to make an end product that is more than the sum of it's parts. It is never more apparent than with baking, but even an omelet is chemistry. What you add to the egg changes it's consistency while cooking. So pay attention. When substituting one thing for another, make certain it fills all the needs of what is being replaced.

And because what it tastes like is the most important part, always taste it in the last minute of cooking to make sure that it has every bit of flavor that it needs. Because a recipe is fixed but ingredients aren't. Sometimes ingredients are stale, sometimes it's a batch that just has a little less flavor than you're used to.

Night of the Living Car

There are points and times within life when we are not in control of the things we eventually take for granted. The apprehension we feel when learning to ride a bike or swim or drive a car disappears as though never having existed once that skill is learned. There is no real memory of the stress of the process except perhaps the occasional anecdote of a particularly ridiculous situation. There is only slightly greater appreciation for these processes than there is for having learned how to walk or to speak. Once learned it is absorbed into the consciousness as though it has always been.

It is a given that when behind the wheel the driver is in complete control of the car. As with their legs they control speed and direction and when it stops. This is perhaps why it is so disturbing when a car fails you. In an odd mental extension it is as though one has suddenly lost control of ones legs or arms; As though you were once again a teenager who was placed in control of a large metal weapon on wheels that is quite clearly working against you.

This is perhaps how one might feel should they be driving an ’86 Jag – essentially an esthetically pleasing tank – on a two lane highway in bumper to bumper stop and go traffic, no shoulder, hills and nowhere to turn off for miles when the carburetor decides to get stuck in ‘accelerate as fast as you can’ mode. The term for this horrifying situation is called ‘sailing’. Which is a ridiculously innocuous term for a condition that is essentially your car trying to kill you and as many others as possible.

One can imagine the smell that starts to immerge from the engine as the breaks, pushed as hard as is physically possible, fight against the engine which is determined to cycle as fast as mechanically possible. Both the smell and the tiny shuddering jerks forward as you inch closer to the car stopped in front of you indicate that it is not at all a certain thing that the human element and the breaks will actually win this battle.

Pulling over as soon as there is an opportunity one finds that stopping before running into the building whose parking lot you are now in is not a matter of hitting the breaks but turning off the ignition. As the car shakes and shudders and clearly threatens to blow your ass up, smoke starts to come up from the hood. No there is no fire, just the scent of burning rubber. The car is homicidal, not suicidal.

Hysterical phone calls may now begin.

Closing the hood of a Jag is absurdly difficult and occasionally hazardous to your fingers. Cracking your thumbnail down the middle and then ripping it sideways is almost to be expected in such a situation as the car, thwarted in actually killing you does what damage it can. One could probably be forgiven for then hanging up on your father for telling you that it’s not necessary to swear because, as the blood drips down your hand, swearing is clearly necessary. Crying may be as well.

This would be when the informed driver, having checked that nothing is causing the accelerator to stick, would call the auto club and go home. The uninformed driver, on her way to visit friends, would sit in the car until traffic cleared up and she stopped shaking enough to drive again and then start down the steep three mile incline between the current location and the desired location and deal with the car while comfortably surrounded by friends… and alcohol which is medicinally needed at this point. There would of course be fevered praying while ‘stopped’ at an intersection towards the bottom of the hill as the car slowly inches forward into the cross traffic. On the plus side there is no need to hit the accelerator when driving under such circumstances, so the right foot can rest except for breaking. And after the car once again shudders and jerks and sputters to a stop with the ignition off there are people with Band-Aids and wine and children in costumes and Halloween candy. And being alive, the car hadn’t won the battle.

If I had a vaguely malicious sense of satisfaction when my father, who kindly came to pick me up that evening, couldn’t fix the car which he clearly thought would be easily done by unsticking some imaginary problem with the accelerator, perhaps I can be forgiven for that.

A Matter of Perspective

There is no such thing as perfect. There is no such thing as ideal. There is only what is in front of us and it is always mixed. What you take away from it is entirely up to you. So when I realized that there was no option available to me except to leave London my initial reaction was to regret what I was about to lose.

I am going to miss my friends. I'm going to miss my garden and shopping in Camden market with Anne, even though I wont get a tattoo in memory. There will never be another neighborhood with as many amazing bakeries as this one. The space needle will never ever be as amazing as Westminster Abbey and the museums aren't remotely comparable to the British Museum or even the boring ones. And I am really really going to miss my friends...

But as I pack two things occur to me. The first being that I have managed to accumulate a ridiculous amount of stuff that I wont be able to take with me. The second is that I'm going to be with all the people and things that I've been missing for the past 2 years. I'm going to get to read books to my niece and nephew and attempt to have conversations with my sister while they play. I'm going to see friends and family. I'm going to be able to go to the SPA whenever I wish and I will finally be able to get some good Mexican food. And to top it off, until I find a job I will be sitting by my parents pool in a hammock with a book enjoying the best part of the summer.

I don't know what happens next. I do know that I'm lucky. I'm incredibly lucky to have people and places and experiences that I can miss this much in not just one but two continents... and some islands as well.

Contemplation

There is something about having too much time for thinking that is a particularly insidious kind of torture. Oddly the inability to hide from oneself is crueler a fate than any slings thrown from ill wishers and uncaring passers by. Because they don't really know. They can guess and insinuate and imagine but they will never know. They will never know the secret insecurities and thoughts that drive the stupid decisions and embarrassing moments. Those insecurities that resurrect every unaddressed feeling or moment that has occurred since birth and a few more beyond that. No external party can ever torture you as deeply and profoundly as your own mind.

This is the real reason that life is generally so busy. Physical survival was created to support emotional survival. Perhaps it merely exists as a distraction so that the force of all the baggage hits in bits and pieces rather than in an avalanche. This is why holidays are 2 weeks not 8, working for a living is a necessity rather than an option and those who have nothing but money and time are so remarkably self destructive. Without work to distract you, there remains chemicals. Well, chemicals or actually dealing with the problems, but that's far less entertaining than one would hope.

Still, every once in a while there is an unexpected external assist that comes along to help through the bits that somehow seemed like they are just always going to be there. And sometimes that external assist is someone who broadcasts their neurosis like a one person talk radio show. Someone who can be in a crowded room and still who's only company is their own neurosis. Because when someone who gives so much power to these no longer secret thought echoes a still secret thought of your own, somehow it gives new light on the decision of just how much power to give those nasty hidden thoughts.

And now we know what I shouldn't be when I grow up

There is something about life while unemployed that is particularly revealing. Life, while working, is a constant and never ending 'to do' list. There is never enough time to get everything done and still enjoy yourself which is why the expectation is that having some time away from work is a good thing.

This is a horrible horrible lie.
Upon returning to the UK to find that my recruiter and the firm handling my visa transfer had between the two of them made things so remarkably complicated that my company-to-be had rescinded their offer, I was immediately relieved. I shouldn't have been. I should have been irate that the offer had been rescinded weeks before while I was still in the US and no one had bothered to tell me. I should have been furious (and briefly was) that no one had mentioned the initial problem to me which I could have resolved in seconds. In fact upon the afternoon of my return to London, mere hours before receiving final confirmation from the company that the offer was in fact rescinded and why, I took a jet-lagged nap and had what could only be described as a nightmare that the offer was still on the table and they were merely awaiting the finalization of the paperwork for me to begin.

At this point, having lost a great deal of time in the job search process I got to work. I redid my CV creating several versions for different types of positions. I searched relentlessly for recruiting firms that remotely claimed that they handled marketing and the IT industry contacting in total over 80 firms. I finally narrowed it down to the three or four that actually deal with what I do specifically. It was miserable draining work and it took ages. Once it was done I leapt at the chance to explore museums and investigate London and all it offers. Aside from the British museum, which due to an adolescent obsession with archeology I never fully recovered from was hugely enjoyable, I have discovered that I hate museums. I hate being a tourist and probably I also hate tourists.

I now alternate between brutal efficiency and semi catatonic stupor broken up by afternoon napping. The hight of the efficiency was last Tuesday when I woke and up bounded to the gym where I stayed for two hours deciding to add a swim to my normal work out, ran errands, did laundry, roasted a chicken, cleaned the kitchen, journaled and cleaned my room. At this point it was two in the afternoon and I was bored out of my mind and completely out of anything remotely productive to do. In desperation I went to the National Gallery where I discovered that 90% of their pictures are of a very blond Jesus and the rest of their paintings are disappointing. I say disappointing fully realizing that they have what on paper looks like an amazing collection. But their Michelangelo paintings are unfinished and religious. If he wasn't even interested enough to finish them, why should I care about them. Their Monet's are not the good ones. They're the ones where you go 'oh... that one... okay.' Even the water lily painting they have is the only one from the series that I don't like.

Oh well... perhaps I'm just not meant to be idle.