This Post is Off the Heezy

I am the youngest person by a good 15 years at my job, though I know a certain Headmaster's assistant who would swear up and down that she's 29 (a lie). But most of the women I work with are literally old enough to be my mom, and- much like my mom- aren't always totally up to speed on pop culture.

To help in their education, I recently decided to use my God-given gifts to start an 'Urban Word of the Day' email* for some of my less, er, culturally-inclined coworkers. Listed here are a few sayings particularly appropriate to my life.

Work Mouth:

A form of self-censorship practiced at work to avoid offensive or cuss words. Typically includes cuss-replacements you learned from your grandma. Potentially embarrassing if accidentally used outside of work at parties or in the company of your drunk friends. May also be used in the company of grandparents, teachers, preachers, and others who disapprove of cussing.

eg. At a party: -Did you just say fiddlesticks? -Yeah, sorry. I still have my work mouth on.

My mother has had her work mouth on since 1949, I think, though her angry phrase of choice is 'horsefeathers'. I will admit to letting the occasional f bomb fly, but when I'm really mad, when my ire is just at an all time high and I can't take it anymore, I let loose with an 'OH HORSEFEATHERS'. Then people know I mean business.

Hangry:
When you are so hungry that your lack of food causes you to become angry, frustrated or both.

Many of the women in my office joined Weight Watchers at the start of the new year, and let me tell you- most of them have been hangry since January 1. It is not a pretty sight, and I face death glares every time I pop a bag of popcorn with lunch.

Premake:
The original version of a song that another band has made a remake of, often used in a sarcastic manner.

eg -Whoa, is that Journey singing 'Don't Stop Believin'? -Yeah, it's a premake of the Glee song.

This reminds me of dear Hannah, who likes to say that foods remind her of a food flavored that way- like "Wow! This banana tastes just like banana-flavored runts!" Same concept applies here- often the things which come later surpass their humble beginnings. And true story- when I hear Phil Collins singing 'True Colors' on the radio, I can't help but sigh and wish for the Glee rendition instead.

Social Terrorism**
When someone you know comes to visit unexpectedly and inconveniently, often staying for a long time, and you can't tell them to leave without being rude.

This... is my biggest fear in life. Forget actual terrorism- I am more scared of being cornered at a party by a random acquaintance, thereby being forced into MINUTES of painful small talk, than I am of a suicide bomber targeting my city. You know how they say that we can't let fear stop us from flying in airplanes or riding the subway or what have you, because then the terrorists have won? Well the social terrorists have won, my friends. I AM AFRAID.

I duck out the side door at church, I arrive at class exactly on time and leave the moment we're dismissed, and I hide in the kitchen at work events, under the guise of helping the caterer. It's become exponentially worse since I started working at a school, and have gotten to know more and more people in the community, which translates into more and more people to avoid at the grocery store.

So to any potential 2012 presidential candidates: if you want my support, let's talk about the REAL issues affecting our country, and finally declare war on Social Terrorism.

*All definitions provided by UrbanDictionary.com
** The best depiction of social terrorism that I've ever seen comes from here.

A Smattering of Adventures

As one can imagine, quite a few things transpired during my year-long absence from the interweb, which I will make note of as I think of them. Here's a random selection.

Last summer, I made a birthday cake for my sweet godson on the occasion of his first birthday, celebrated with a Curious George themed party. I was deliriously happy with the final product- I so lack any fiber of craftiness, that any creative victory, in my mind, is tantamount to producing the Mona Lisa. I can't even fake humility about it - I was all "LOOK AT MY CAKE. LOOK AT IT. IT'S LIKE WE'RE ON AN EPISODE OF CAKE BOSS OR SOMETHING".

Of course, what you can't see in this picture is the prep required for such an outcome.You can ask my sweet, patient roommates at the time: DISASTER IN THE KITCHEN. Seriously. I baked no less than 9 cakes to make that big yellow hat happen, and by the time the whole thing was over, it was like a frosting bomb went off in our kitchen and left no survivors. Not to mention that the assembling of the cake was a rather unsavory process that I'm grateful none of the cake-eaters were around to witness. There was a fair amount of 'smooshing' - that is, shoving bits of cake into holes. I mean, I washed my hands beforehand, but still, it wasn't pretty.

In August, we began the new school year. Our first crisis came on Orientation Day. The day before school started. Bodes well, doesn't it? Our Director of Student Life was out of the country at a conference and understandably, missed taking care of a few details. Like arranging for brunch for the 100+ new students and their parents who were coming in.

When we discovered this at 8 am the morning of, alerted by our panicked headmaster, my new boss, only there for less than a week, was sent to the closest grocery store for muffins and donuts, while I was charged with coffee duty. We don't have a kitchen in the school, and the only coffeemaker is located in the faculty break room, several long hallways and a staircase away from the cafeteria. On a day when we are expected to put our best foot forward, making new students feel welcome, and setting their anxious parents at ease, I found myself repeatedly speedwalking through the crowded halls with an open steaming pot of coffee in each hand, smiling reassuringly at newcomers, as though this was standard fare, an integral part of a truly Catholic education. While not one of our finest moments, it is certainly representative of what I live there, day in and day out- and why I love it so.

And lastly, New Year's 2010. Through a somewhat random processing of events, I found myself going to Florida for the New Year, after ten wonderful days at home in Michigan, during which I did very little besides eat, sleep, and shop. Truly- most days, I got up, ate a light brunch, read/watched tv/shopped, then cooked for the fam all afternoon, eating a heavy appetizer in late afternoon while doing a puzzle or playing a game, and dinner with wine in the evening. It's all a big blur of cream cheese and booze now.


I digress. My preferred Road Dawg Courtney and I decided we would make the drive from Michigan to Florida, in one day no less, and so we set out at 5 in the morning, arriving in St. Petersburg a mere eighteen and a half hours later. We joined two more friends there and spent the next few days cooking meals in our rented condo, trying to suntan, and going out on the town. Oh, and making tandem bike adventures around the islands. It was a really fun city, though I couldn't help thinking that we were driving around on a glorified sandbar and bound to sink at any moment. But we didn't, and I lived to tell the tale.

My, oh my, oh my. Hello there, blog. I remember you. I nearly didn't, and then I spent the past twenty minutes re-reading my life in 2009.

I haven't posted in more than a year, and since I'm guessing that my parents have long since stopped checking to see if I've updated, it's a safe bet that no one is even reading this, but I was thinking I should get back into the groove of blogging. It's nice to have a record of the things that go on in your life- especially the little memories. It's easy to remember flying home to surprise my mom two summers ago, but harder to remember reading the book Drunk aloud with friends at Borders on a Friday night.

It's almost comical how much has changed since I last posted, but it is the genesis for my absence. Last March, I was offered a job at a Catholic school here in town, a school I loved for a thousand reasons long before I even first set foot in it. From their mission to their staff to their curriculum, it's like a less homeschooled Hillsdale who pledges allegiance to the Pope. Not hard to see why I was sold.

I spent the week before I started there in Indianapolis, Chicago and Michigan, and while sitting in Patrick and Margaret's Lincoln Park apartment on a Tuesday night, I received an email informing me that I'd been accepted to Clemson's graduate program for school counseling. And so it began.

My seventh day of work at my new job, the headmaster called me into his office. The look of doom on his assistant's face should have tipped me off that not all was well, but like a chump, I assumed the big boss was just checking in to see how my first week went. And when he started out with "I'm not sure how to say this..." my naturally guilty mind immediately thought "oh no- they found out that I checked my personal email during work hours yesterday. It was just gmail, not like I was cruising the personal ads on Craigslist! But they must be really strict here..." So wrapped up in my Catholic guilt was I, that I nearly missed big boss telling me that my immediate boss had been let go the night before. The one I was hired to directly support. Ummm.

I didn't say much except for "okay" and nod my head repeatedly- a response that has gained me a certain amount of infamy in the time since. I guess you don't know what to expect when you give someone news like that, and you prepare for the worst, so the fact that I didn't run screaming from the room instantly gave me some street cred (or the Catholic school equivalent of it).

From that point on, things ramped up very quickly. Two days later, I threw my first event for 70 of our highest-level donors, feeling very much like I was inhabiting someone else's body the whole time. I was, to use the term loosely, promoted almost immediately, and my stress level consequently jumped about 9000 percent. While I loved everything about the school I worked for- the education we provided, the people I worked with, the perks (like half-days all summer long, and wicked awesome vacation time), in my first two months there, I began to experience headaches so bad that I finally went to a doctor and told him, through tears and sniffles, that I was certain I had a brain tumor, because I hurt every day, all the time. My doctor, to his credit, tried not to laugh, and instead ran tests, finally assuring me that I was neurologically sound and based on the events that had recently transpired in my life, my choices were a) anxiety medication, b) therapy or c) waiting it out. Guess which one this anti-drug introvert chose?

So that's the job. It's much calmer now, and the headaches are gone, for the most part, thanks largely to a newfound commitment to working out. I do love it, and everything else that has come in this new phase of life. Well, perhaps not everything- there are moments when I'm sitting in class, discussing Charlie Sheen's psychological issues, when I experience a bit of nostalgia for my calm life of a year ago, but those are stories for another post.