I look exactly the same, except now I have front teeth and wrinkles and a two or three times the body mass. 

I still have done *jack shite* on my presentation for tomorrow.  Other than assure the coordinator that I'll be there.  I didn't add, "Dressed as a taco." but I wanted to.

Craig has a new potential girlfriend and he has asked that I read and translate her emails for signs of Interest.

"Your a woman," he observed. I was wearing my more feminine scowl.

This time he brought a handful of small sized candy bars.  I picked through them until I found an acceptable one: A Crunch Bar,

"You don't want my input on this," I warned him, unwrapping the chocolate and stuffing into my mouth,

"I am so horrendous at reading subtle social signals and cues as to be almost good at math instead of hygiene."

"I can't tell if she's just being friendly, or whether I should fly to South Carolina and bring some condoms…I need your help.  I don't trust anyone else around here."

(!!!  I KNOW!!  WAS HE DRUNK?  NO! I almost spit out the confection.  Instead I ate another one rapidly, a Mounds, while he gave me the background on this woman. I believe I nodded, not so much in agreement as in time with my chewing.)

Like Craig's last 3 "lady friends", he met and "dated" this woman over 30 years ago. They had reconnected on Facebook, where she "looks exactly the same as she did back then!"

Yes, of course. I look exactly the same as I did when I was 7 on my Facebook … Because its a picture of me when I was seven.

"In eighth grade we were inseparable," he said,  "I've been stalking her on the internet since July…she finally emailed me back and we're starting to rekindle things. I think. She's a little slow to respond…"

"Maybe instead of condoms and flying, you could drive a van to South Carolina and bring shackles. And some GHB." 

"What is GHB?" he asked.  Because the Van and Shackles sounded reasonable, I suppose.

"Google it," I replied. "I have to finish this presentation…."  I gestured at my screen, which was actually on gmail at the time.  He never looks.

He took the remaining 6 candies.  He still hasn't forwarded me the email, but now I am curious. I'll do anything to avoid working on something that I hate so much. Like update this blog with blan chatter.  I have NO DISCIPLINE.  NONE.

I have a map of the US with aircraft and weather and fires….and nothing to say about any of it.  I will stand up before these now numbering 50+ people tomorrow, dressed as a taco, and I will simply chew while the map rotates on its access.    Maybe I'll read aloud from Craig's emails….if he ever sends them. He is so unreliable…

Two things:

1) I'm going to start categorizing my posts so that people who link from other stockdog related sites to this one can click on a category and only have to see posts related to that topic and not my other weirder shit that some of you hate.  It's because I care so much.  Too much actually.  It keeps me up at night.  Fretting. 

2) My bosses boss has spent the entire morning in my cubicle seeking advice on who to rent his vacant apartment to: A newly released felon meth-addict or a freshly convicted sex offender. 

"What would you do?" he asked.  Indeed.

Craig seeks my advice on all sorts of improbable stuff.  Or he used to.  Child-rearing, love, marriage, divorce, sex, cooking….He's a veritable Pilgram to the Deep Well of Wrong Answers. 

He has actually been mad at me since I made him the butt of one too many font-related jokes a month or more ago.  I publicly accused him of confusing topography with typography.  Technology with something lab monkeys can bang out given a few IBM Selectrics and an afternoon full of monkey mix and heavy bond paper…  Anyway, I've been free to work without interruption until today, my busiest day in maybe a year, when he showed up with pretzels and a fresh problem I shouldn't be trusted to solve were I a sensitive practical type who believed in the deep down goodness of humanity, the capacity for people to change, and that owning a rental is not the worst thing a person could do to himself outside of marrying someone who frequents Pay Day Loan establishments. (He last fine choice.)  (Sadly, mine as well.)

"What would I do?" I repeated.

"Yeah.  The meth-addict says she can only pay me $350 a month and half the deposit. The sex offender has the full amount, but he can't legally cross the street and not violate the terms of his parole."

"What would I do…" I reflected, actually typing an email and sending it to the wrong recipients…twice…

"Hmmmmm"

"You aren't listening to me, are you?" Craig asked, sounding annoyed. 

My fingers paused in their typing of the wrong things.

"No. I don't like pretzels."

3) I don't have advice that anyone should take on anything.  Really.  I'll offer it up, with the right beverage or snack incentive. I may even sound fully convinced of the legitimacy of my stance…but I am so full of shit as to almost be my own colon.    I did the man a favor.  

He'll be back with cookies.

I hate the number 2. 

In a perfect world (Newest Green Plymouth, coming soon in 2010) I think poetry should only be used to deliver really bad news. Like Death or Disease. Military Coup.  How much its going to cost to get your car fixed…I like the contrast of horrible and horrific.  I'm also a big fan of training shitzu's to sniff out cancer and letting them bear the bad news at your doctor appointment. Same reasons. Then they wag for a snausage and you are on your way.

It's over the top cheesy to use poetry to describe or express Love and Beauty.   That sort of thing needs to be emoted through some sort of process that contrasts your weakness in needing to.  Van Gogh had it right with cutting his ear off.  I'd probably cut someone elses off, because I hate pain. But I would ask first, and offer cash compensation, if it was a good ear, one a shitzu had recently sniffed.  But even that, really, is too much work. I think beauty should be trapped and love should be beaten down. If you must write about it, write an obituary or a Craig's List ad. 

I'm a huge romantic. I'm older fashioned than Hallmark or walking upright.  

Today is election day ….and I forgot to run for Mayor. Which is okay, because the GL mayor seat isn't part of this election cycle.  I think its 2010.  Whatever. I'm starting my campaign today because ….

I did my morning google on how Greenleaf got its name and found the following pathetic fact:

The community was named for John Greenleaf Whittier, Quaker poet.

I'm really pretty strongly opposed to poets in general, for the most part, but I do love oatmeal.   I think its time to erase this violently bad rhyming history from the city annals:

O Brother Man, fold to thy heart thy brother:

Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;

To worship rightly is to love each other,

Each smile a hymn, each kindly word a prayer.

And replace it with my own better verse that celebrates more the breakfast cereal side of things:

Boil for Three Minutes, Stir and Let Stand,

                                    by Mayor Elect KS Hipke

Yo, piece-packin' peace lovin' quick-cookin' mo fo's –

Time to get your rural ass down to the votin' po's

You can keep your oats, your God and your Gun

I'm buildin me a liquor barn bigger than the Sun

Friday night I carved pumpkins at Dianne's house.  My children would gasp in amazement that I took part in such an elaborate and pointless ceremony, (that doesn't end in a new step-dad) which in their pumpkin carving years was simplified to:

"We just need to get these things open and scoop out the seeds.  Use the big knives, its faster."

"But our friends make Jack O'Lanterns," they'd whine.

"Your friends go to bed at eight and aren't allowed to call eachother 'Shitheal'." I would remind them,

"Anyway, it's scarier to have a pumpkin full of stab wounds, orange entrails spilling out of harsh shapes cut in desperation to get at the insides….That is the point, right? And its scary especially when you tell your friends tomorrow that the seeds are all you had for dinner.  Dressing in that hokey pirate costume Grandma bought won't frighten your teacher nearly as much as this polaroid of you and your sister foraging through roasted orange muck for sustenance at a table that clearly hasn't seen 'dinner' since the 40's…make sure to hold up your bloody hand wrapped in the sock-bandage, Cienna…"

Other families would watch The Peanuts Halloween special, but we'd watch Forensic Files or flip through my dad's old Homicide Investigation text books. 

"You want scary? Take a look at this family from Michigan and how they spent Halloween – hacked up and stuffed in a freezer! Next to POPCICLES! God, who'd want their head to be found and photographed next to a really cheap confection?"

I love my children and their happiness, of course, means everything to me.  Most people want their kids to be happy, and that is defined, often, by some monetarally-scaled equivalent of successful.  For me it's always been most important that they can laugh. I want my children to be funny.  And Funny is the youngest, prettiest, best loved child of Fucked Up.  You don't get to be funny watching cartoons and living the middle class dream in your two-parent household with lots of rules and an emotional flat line that sort of peaks around prime time.  I'm probably just justifying how I like to live though. BUT, goddamn, my kids are funny. AND they can both COOK, thank god.

Carving pumpkins at Dianne's was actually fun.  Her son is funny. He said, at one point,

"I didn't think I'd ever meet someone who was worse at this than me!"   

Too bad he hasn't met Carlos and Cienna yet.  They really suck.

Gena is a mother.  A single mother.  She has 3 children whom she adopted from far away lands or convicts and she parents like a hun.  She approaches everything with the same Atilla softness. I like Gena a lot, but I've never had her strict overbearing dictator arm pointed at me.  I have never supervised anyone and never will.  There isn't a GS-rating high enough to tempt me.  As a mother, I tend toward being….bewildered. Thank GOD my children have always pitied my lack of parenting skills instead of exploiting them.   Where I've heard Gena tell people she has her kids do jumping jacks for questioning her, I tended to question myself when my children questioned me.

"God, Carlos…maybe you are right. Maybe we should pull an all nighter and watch this movie 5 more times.  I think I thought you were supposed to be in bed by 8 because I've heard such things on television or from less imaginative mothers. Get me another beer and lets get on with it!"

When Cienna and Carlos were small, my only real rule was, "Please don't bring too many of those other people your age over at once. I'm not sure what to say to them and I'm pretty certain I can only go an hour or so without using the words that your teachers don't like and that your not allowed to say, except at family gatherings, until you can use them correctly in a FULL sentence."

This advice applies to me and people my age, too. 

Gena is trying to boss Susie and me around this morning.  She's rearranged her work area, because Janus suggested that she do so, and now she's reclaiming her tactical space.  Susie feels guilty to have started this and exposed. Susie hates conflict. She is on her belly licking Gena's jaw. 

Gena just suggested that I move my boxes, so she doesn't have to face them, to which I replied,

"No…I have a meeting then I'm going home, bitches. " 

We all have to face something we don't like.  Silence. Susie and Gena exchange eyebrow involved glances.

No one said Thank You to me for giving them something to bond over. 

When I got to work this morning, Janus intercepted me outside her office, where I was skulking, and said,

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm….what do I ever do here?"  I thought it might be a trick question.

"Susie isn't going to be happy…I told her that she'd have the office to herself…"

"SWEET HOT CREAMY CENTERED CHRIST, Janus, are we really catering to this despot in disneywear?"

Apparently we are.  I have to keep my office calendar current and WORK AT HOME more so that Susie's head doesn't pop right off and go rolling down the rat-infested hallway.  

Susie just got to work.  I'm playing my favorite L7 cd – Hungry for Stink…softly.  L7 was a part of the original grunge scene, only out of Los Angeles.  I love their music, but I'm guessing Susie won't.  It's funny that this angry, disturbed punk sounds actually more sinister played softly,

I'm saving my piss in a jar
This depression has gone too far
I'm lying here in bed
Am I alive or am I dead

The paint chips are kicking in
Desperation bubbles my skin
There's stuff crawling on the floor
Crackers with black books knocking at my door

Now I just need a bookshelf for my Precious Dead Baby Animals in Jars collection.  I'm bidding on twin squirrels RIGHT NOW! 

I worked Jen and Pat at Dianne's house this morning. 

Pat took all my gentle corrections, my whistles were recognizable as direction and not some sort of off-key mechanical tourettes.  Pat stayed calm, I stayed quiet and confident.  He worked better for me than he ever has. He took inside flanks, his outruns were wide and nice; he stopped on a dime ….I had .60 cents scattered all over the pasture…and a couple of nickels, one of which he pee'd on, as did I…more disappointing than a penny, really, and none of the old world charm. One thing is certain: Pat knows his pocket change…

Jen likewise listened and her stamina has improved even in this short period.  My biggest challenge with her this weekend will be in not losing my own head and doing a succession of stupid things.  Like being on the wrong side of the gate for the sort, forgetting an obstacle, or answering my cell phone if it rings. …Thinking I should try anything that involves a duck. 

Both worked so well that it's almost ominous.  Just in case, for the trial I plan to wear a flame-retardant
padded suit, carry a thatch of Dianne's hair, and
saturate my shoes with goat urine.  That last part is experimental.

I'm looking forward to the ranch trial…and being out at GL all weekend. 

Apparently SUSIE doesn't like our office arrangement.  After Gena and I left yesterday, Susie whined like a jetski across the pristine waters that were our mostly unpacked (well, not me..) setup, down the hall, and into Janus' office. 

Gena texted me last night. 

"Susie went to Janus after we left today and told her that she hates everything about our office and is demanding things be rearranged, with movable partitions and that my air fresheners be put in the break room…"

I have no idea how she knows this.  She is prone to paranoia, she probably has our offices wired.  Those fucking plants.  She and Susie are much better friends than any other configuration in this mix, outside the fichus and the fern, maybe,  and, frankly, I don't give a roll-away fuck where I work. I'm working on my couch in Greenleaf right now.  My dogs wag when I "take a meeting"….Only people I like call me on my cell phone.   I have all the coffee I need and music and NPR and no. fucking. renuzit. 

That the Renuzit was one of Susie's complaints is pretty funny, actually.  Maybe she has a beef (PUN! She's a VEGETARIAN!) with the plug in freshener because I told her, when Gena was out of the room, that they are tested on KITTENS.  They might be. I don't know that they AREN'T.  Anyway, Susie wants candles, apple cider cooking in her tiny crookpot…'natural' odors….  Everything bad is relegated to the break room, THAT I can agree with.  I dump everything I don't want in there… Once I left a sandwich on the table, like an offering to Breaks. No one touched it for at least a week. I assume it isn't still there, but I wouldn't put money on it. Maybe its been relocated to the new breakroom.

Anyway, the entire time we were moving into our office Gena kept consulting both Susie and I…

"Is it okay if I put my bookshelf here?"

"Do you mind your desk there?"

"Can I burn something that smells like old lady sweaters on high?"

I didn't care much about any of it, except the ELECTRIC ODOR MACHINE.  Susie shrugged and smiled through it all.  Susie has DEMANDS that she will only air at the top.  I hate that sort of passive aggressive way of doing business. 

I have a jar of Doe Pee (100%) scent from a few years ago I thought might be nice. It is fall…