Thursday, June 18, 2015
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The Twentysomething Experience: Moving As an Adult
I've been helped through some hard times myself, so when I find myself in a position to help others, I like to do so. I also like spending time with my friend Emily and her husband, Rob, so I figured helping them move with my beast of a car in exchange for a tank of gas instead of leaving them to rent a U-Haul AND buy gas was probably a great deal for them. I also figured it would be lots of fun for all involved. They went for it.
I think we all naively envisioned a sitcom-like experience, which is to say, we thought it would be pretty entertaining and over in half an hour.
I drove from Sandusky to Akron that night thinking we'd throw their few remaining belongings that couldn't fit in Rob's Mustang into the back of my station wagon and be on our merry way. Instead, when I arrived, a lot of stuff still wasn't even in boxes yet.
Part of being in your twenties, I think, is that while you may have accepted the fact that you're going to have to spend a fair amount of time doing things you don't really like to do, you haven't yet lost your feeling of invincibility with regard to how quickly you will get them done.
You give yourself way too much slack-time before attempting the tasks to be completed because it won't take nearly as long as everyone with both feet firmly rooted in reality keeps insisting that it will. You know that you have to do it, and you plan to do it, but you just don't believe that it will take that long.
This is when the everyday things in life become monstrously overwhelming. Like moving.
So I arrived, and several rooms still had yet to be packed up. Emily was cleaning the master bathroom but the master bedroom was all clear, so she handed me the vacuum cleaner hose extension and put me to work sucking up dust from the molding around the bottom of the walls.
Not very entertaining, but I was done in probably 3-5 minutes, so it didn't faze me at all. We still had plenty of time.
Emily had a crafting nook in the apartment, and lots of things of a fragile nature that still needed to be wrapped. I tackled it, thinking even that would not put us behind our 30-minute sitcom schedule. She helped me, and that sealed the deal. This was going to be so easy. I was a hero for helping. With me there, everyone could get everything done way faster!
And while we were doing that, Rob was busy shredding piles of papers they didn't need anymore, occasionally checking with Emily to make sure it was all right.
Him: "Can I shred this car title?"
Her: "....WHAT CAR TITLE?!"
(momentary discussion)
Him: "Can I shred the shredder manual?"
Us: "Go for it!"
(two minutes later)
Him: "Can I shred something that's stapled, or do I have to take out the staples first?"
(nervous silence)
Me: "...I guess we'll never know now..."
And so on. It was shaping up to be just like in my sitcom-fantasy after all. We were getting stuff done, we were making each other laugh, everything was great.
We were hugely proud of ourselves for getting everything "packed up", until we realized that all we'd really done was take a bunch of boxes and small pieces of furniture and put them in the middle of the living room floor. We had effectively moved one room into the other.
No matter. That just meant it was time to start loading up my car. Really, we were moving along quite nicely. It could be an hour-long sitcom. That's a thing, right?
So we huffed and puffed our way up and down the stairs a few times until we'd tightly packed my car from the floor storage on up to the roof with boxes and furniture. I'm not sure how much time had passed at this point, I had lost track, but the sun was still shining. Granted, it was setting, but still shining nonetheless.
Our arms and legs ached from lifting and climbing stairs, but it was the satisfying kind of ache that goes along with having shown the "real" grown-ups of the world that it can be done. You're really that much more efficient than your parents ever were, and you feel a little sad for them, because they spent so much of their youth on this sort of thing when it was completely unnecessary.
Rob was the first to discover how wrong we were.
He came down the steps with another load to go into my car and realized before we did that there was just no way.
When we saw the worry in his eyes, we stopped leaning on the car and walked around the back to see if things could be rearranged to accommodate the microwave in his arms.
Not only was there no room left, but my car was sitting noticeably lower to the ground than it had been when I arrived. Its spatial and weight capacities had been surpassed.
And the microwave wasn't all that was left.
Rob tried to explain this to us, but we insisted what was left could EASILY fit into the trunk of his car.
After much persuasion on our part, Rob accepted the burden of reality quietly, allowing us to hold fast to our childlike delusions. He turned and slowly trudged back up the steps with the microwave, and we set out for Toledo, leaving him to deal with our gross overestimation of square footage to be found in the trunk of a Ford Mustang.
Incidentally, our wake-up call came much later, when they ended up needing (among other things) a new microwave.
I think we all naively envisioned a sitcom-like experience, which is to say, we thought it would be pretty entertaining and over in half an hour.
I drove from Sandusky to Akron that night thinking we'd throw their few remaining belongings that couldn't fit in Rob's Mustang into the back of my station wagon and be on our merry way. Instead, when I arrived, a lot of stuff still wasn't even in boxes yet.
Part of being in your twenties, I think, is that while you may have accepted the fact that you're going to have to spend a fair amount of time doing things you don't really like to do, you haven't yet lost your feeling of invincibility with regard to how quickly you will get them done.
You give yourself way too much slack-time before attempting the tasks to be completed because it won't take nearly as long as everyone with both feet firmly rooted in reality keeps insisting that it will. You know that you have to do it, and you plan to do it, but you just don't believe that it will take that long.
This is when the everyday things in life become monstrously overwhelming. Like moving.
So I arrived, and several rooms still had yet to be packed up. Emily was cleaning the master bathroom but the master bedroom was all clear, so she handed me the vacuum cleaner hose extension and put me to work sucking up dust from the molding around the bottom of the walls.
Not very entertaining, but I was done in probably 3-5 minutes, so it didn't faze me at all. We still had plenty of time.
Emily had a crafting nook in the apartment, and lots of things of a fragile nature that still needed to be wrapped. I tackled it, thinking even that would not put us behind our 30-minute sitcom schedule. She helped me, and that sealed the deal. This was going to be so easy. I was a hero for helping. With me there, everyone could get everything done way faster!
And while we were doing that, Rob was busy shredding piles of papers they didn't need anymore, occasionally checking with Emily to make sure it was all right.
Him: "Can I shred this car title?"
Her: "....WHAT CAR TITLE?!"
(momentary discussion)
Him: "Can I shred the shredder manual?"
Us: "Go for it!"
(two minutes later)
Him: "Can I shred something that's stapled, or do I have to take out the staples first?"
(nervous silence)
Me: "...I guess we'll never know now..."
And so on. It was shaping up to be just like in my sitcom-fantasy after all. We were getting stuff done, we were making each other laugh, everything was great.
We were hugely proud of ourselves for getting everything "packed up", until we realized that all we'd really done was take a bunch of boxes and small pieces of furniture and put them in the middle of the living room floor. We had effectively moved one room into the other.
No matter. That just meant it was time to start loading up my car. Really, we were moving along quite nicely. It could be an hour-long sitcom. That's a thing, right?
So we huffed and puffed our way up and down the stairs a few times until we'd tightly packed my car from the floor storage on up to the roof with boxes and furniture. I'm not sure how much time had passed at this point, I had lost track, but the sun was still shining. Granted, it was setting, but still shining nonetheless.
Our arms and legs ached from lifting and climbing stairs, but it was the satisfying kind of ache that goes along with having shown the "real" grown-ups of the world that it can be done. You're really that much more efficient than your parents ever were, and you feel a little sad for them, because they spent so much of their youth on this sort of thing when it was completely unnecessary.
Rob was the first to discover how wrong we were.
He came down the steps with another load to go into my car and realized before we did that there was just no way.
When we saw the worry in his eyes, we stopped leaning on the car and walked around the back to see if things could be rearranged to accommodate the microwave in his arms.
Not only was there no room left, but my car was sitting noticeably lower to the ground than it had been when I arrived. Its spatial and weight capacities had been surpassed.
And the microwave wasn't all that was left.
Rob tried to explain this to us, but we insisted what was left could EASILY fit into the trunk of his car.
After much persuasion on our part, Rob accepted the burden of reality quietly, allowing us to hold fast to our childlike delusions. He turned and slowly trudged back up the steps with the microwave, and we set out for Toledo, leaving him to deal with our gross overestimation of square footage to be found in the trunk of a Ford Mustang.
Incidentally, our wake-up call came much later, when they ended up needing (among other things) a new microwave.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
What I'm going to do to the printer at work
This printer; this godforsaken piece of junk. It is beeping. It is a steady, long, whiny, high-pitched beep. It throws a tantrum like this regularly, and the only thing that will fix it is to take the paper out and reload it. What is so bad about that, you ask?
The fact that it is the kind of printer where the paper has perforated edges. That you have to line up perfectly, and have extremely developed fine motor skills to guide it, peg by peg, hole by hole, around the cylinder until it eventually "takes" and you can put the bar down to hold the paper in place and use the scroll wheel to feed it through the rest of the way.
Folks, what I just described has NEVER been less than a fifteen-minute process that includes a wide range of emotions and ends with one mentally and emotionally exhausted hotel worker with sore thumbs from trying to feed the paper through.
There is anxiety, there is rage. There have been panic attacks (OMG WHAT AM I GOING TO DO IF I CAN'T GET IT TO WORK SOMEBODY COULD BE CALLING 911 RIGHT NOW AND IT'S NOT BEING LOGGED AND NOTHING IS BEING LOGGED AND I CAN'T PROVE THAT ANYTHING I DID WITH THE PHONE SYSTEM FOR OUR GUESTS EVER HAPPENED AND THEY COULD DISPUTE WHETHER OR NOT THEY GOT THEIR WAKE UP CALL AND NO ONE WOULD BELIEVE ME AND NOBODY EVER BELIEVES ME!!!)
I know continuous Capslock is normally considered rude, but I feel it's necessary to convey the fear that strikes my heart when this printer decides to rebel.
And yet, after all of this, it's usually fixed, so in the end, it doesn't actually seem quite so bad.
Not tonight.
No, that stupid thing is still going strong. I've reloaded, I've rebooted. I've unplugged and left it unplugged for a few minutes and tried again, and all I get is the same flat, high-pitched whine that pierces my brain and my soul.
Well, someday, I'm going to get the last word. Consider this video your warning, Printer.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ec6_1187579158
Okay, so that link doesn't actually work. Oops! I can't figure out how to get it to appear for you, so you will have to copy and paste it into a new tab or window to see it. Do it anyway--it's worth it.
The fact that it is the kind of printer where the paper has perforated edges. That you have to line up perfectly, and have extremely developed fine motor skills to guide it, peg by peg, hole by hole, around the cylinder until it eventually "takes" and you can put the bar down to hold the paper in place and use the scroll wheel to feed it through the rest of the way.
Folks, what I just described has NEVER been less than a fifteen-minute process that includes a wide range of emotions and ends with one mentally and emotionally exhausted hotel worker with sore thumbs from trying to feed the paper through.
There is anxiety, there is rage. There have been panic attacks (OMG WHAT AM I GOING TO DO IF I CAN'T GET IT TO WORK SOMEBODY COULD BE CALLING 911 RIGHT NOW AND IT'S NOT BEING LOGGED AND NOTHING IS BEING LOGGED AND I CAN'T PROVE THAT ANYTHING I DID WITH THE PHONE SYSTEM FOR OUR GUESTS EVER HAPPENED AND THEY COULD DISPUTE WHETHER OR NOT THEY GOT THEIR WAKE UP CALL AND NO ONE WOULD BELIEVE ME AND NOBODY EVER BELIEVES ME!!!)
I know continuous Capslock is normally considered rude, but I feel it's necessary to convey the fear that strikes my heart when this printer decides to rebel.
And yet, after all of this, it's usually fixed, so in the end, it doesn't actually seem quite so bad.
Not tonight.
No, that stupid thing is still going strong. I've reloaded, I've rebooted. I've unplugged and left it unplugged for a few minutes and tried again, and all I get is the same flat, high-pitched whine that pierces my brain and my soul.
Well, someday, I'm going to get the last word. Consider this video your warning, Printer.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ec6_1187579158
Okay, so that link doesn't actually work. Oops! I can't figure out how to get it to appear for you, so you will have to copy and paste it into a new tab or window to see it. Do it anyway--it's worth it.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Dear Chain-Texting Friends,
I am noticing a pattern here.
It starts with the text message you think you can check on the sly at work. After all, it's a text message, not a voicemail, so nothing loud should happen when you open it, right?
WRONG! It's a banana with a robe on now suddenly removing its robe to reveal a massive penis, with the Mission Impossible theme blasting, causing you to jump, drop the phone, and make an ass out of yourself in front of two to three co-workers.
Then there's the Three Levels of Guilt Tripping Chain Texts.
Level One doesn't seem so bad...it's a little annoying, but nothing serious.
It usually goes something like: "forward this Hallmark cardlike message to anyone who's made a difference in your life,. including me". It's innocent enough--for one thing, it's optional. I don't HAVE to reply. Nothing in that says I have to reply. There's a bit of peer pressure to do so, I suppose, if you really have made a difference in my life, but I don't have to lose sleep over it if I choose not to respond and/or forward it along to 15 people. But then you start upping the ante.
The next level of guilt-tripping in this process is a little more serious. These texts are the ones that attach a specific reason why the recipient of the text should feel bad for not returning/forwarding it along. And these make me angry. They usually say something along the lines of "forward this to 20 people if you love Jesus. (then they quote the verse about Jesus rejecting the people who reject him)...or you can do nothing. The choice is yours...."
Yeah, some choice. My love for Jesus and my acknowledgment of him as my lord and savior has now been tied to whether or not I forward your idiotic text message to twenty other innocent people just trying to get through the day without any additional, unnecessary stress.
But wait! There's more!
If I don't respond to THAT message, the stakes get even higher.
As if it weren't enough that I just condemned myself to hell for all eternity by rejecting Jesus Christ Himself and not forwarding the burden of guilt along to twenty (or more) people, BAM! Here comes Level Three of the Guilt Tripping Chain Text Process:
"Send this to 35 people and something REALLY AWESOME will happen to you today! Don't send it to anyone, and you will have bad luck for seven years!"
Seven years?
That's pretty heavy stuff, right there. Mostly because it begins immediately as soon as I read the message. The clock is ticking. The pressure is on. At least with the Jesus stuff, I can maybe repent for rejecting Christ by not forwarding the message, but this kind of text is different. There is immediate, irreversible danger!
Now not only have I shown my friends I don't appreciate them and condemned my soul to hell for all eternity, but my life for the next seven years in this world is ruined, as of right this second, because of my initial decision to not forward it because I don't want to bother twenty or more people.
There's also the conditional ones that promise more (or fewer) years of sorrow and suffering depending upon how many people you chose to or not to forward the text message. "Oh, good", I think to myself when this happens, " At least I know four people who won't mind this forward, so now I only have to suffer for TWO years. I can bargain this down!"
Well, I've had enough. Today I'm sending out a message of my own to those of you who place your own needs for validation through mindless social interaction above my need for sanity and peace in my soul:
My love for Jesus does not depend upon whether I not I forward your text to 20+ people. And if it does, then screw you for putting me in that position. I could have spent my afterlife in paradise and you ruined it for me by sending me a CHAIN TEXT?! What the hell kind of friend are you, anyway?!
Stop it. Stop your banana nudity, your guilt trips and your threats.
Stop using my phone as a means to ruin this life AND the afterlife for me. Even if I did have unlimited text messaging, it's still a waste of texts. Things like what I talked about here should just not be said, ever.
If you don't desist, you can expect a whole new level of Guilt Tripping Chain Text from me, and I guarantee it will not be pretty. I will combine all three elements and add something else too, just to make it more interesting. You'll be so busy looking over your shoulder because you didn't even know five hundred people to forward my Level Four Threat To Your Present and Future Lifetimes chain text to EVER have time to send me one again.
At least YOU have been given an opportunity to avoid such a predicament!
Julie
It starts with the text message you think you can check on the sly at work. After all, it's a text message, not a voicemail, so nothing loud should happen when you open it, right?
WRONG! It's a banana with a robe on now suddenly removing its robe to reveal a massive penis, with the Mission Impossible theme blasting, causing you to jump, drop the phone, and make an ass out of yourself in front of two to three co-workers.
Then there's the Three Levels of Guilt Tripping Chain Texts.
Level One doesn't seem so bad...it's a little annoying, but nothing serious.
It usually goes something like: "forward this Hallmark cardlike message to anyone who's made a difference in your life,. including me". It's innocent enough--for one thing, it's optional. I don't HAVE to reply. Nothing in that says I have to reply. There's a bit of peer pressure to do so, I suppose, if you really have made a difference in my life, but I don't have to lose sleep over it if I choose not to respond and/or forward it along to 15 people. But then you start upping the ante.
The next level of guilt-tripping in this process is a little more serious. These texts are the ones that attach a specific reason why the recipient of the text should feel bad for not returning/forwarding it along. And these make me angry. They usually say something along the lines of "forward this to 20 people if you love Jesus. (then they quote the verse about Jesus rejecting the people who reject him)...or you can do nothing. The choice is yours...."
Yeah, some choice. My love for Jesus and my acknowledgment of him as my lord and savior has now been tied to whether or not I forward your idiotic text message to twenty other innocent people just trying to get through the day without any additional, unnecessary stress.
But wait! There's more!
If I don't respond to THAT message, the stakes get even higher.
As if it weren't enough that I just condemned myself to hell for all eternity by rejecting Jesus Christ Himself and not forwarding the burden of guilt along to twenty (or more) people, BAM! Here comes Level Three of the Guilt Tripping Chain Text Process:
"Send this to 35 people and something REALLY AWESOME will happen to you today! Don't send it to anyone, and you will have bad luck for seven years!"
Seven years?
That's pretty heavy stuff, right there. Mostly because it begins immediately as soon as I read the message. The clock is ticking. The pressure is on. At least with the Jesus stuff, I can maybe repent for rejecting Christ by not forwarding the message, but this kind of text is different. There is immediate, irreversible danger!
Now not only have I shown my friends I don't appreciate them and condemned my soul to hell for all eternity, but my life for the next seven years in this world is ruined, as of right this second, because of my initial decision to not forward it because I don't want to bother twenty or more people.
There's also the conditional ones that promise more (or fewer) years of sorrow and suffering depending upon how many people you chose to or not to forward the text message. "Oh, good", I think to myself when this happens, " At least I know four people who won't mind this forward, so now I only have to suffer for TWO years. I can bargain this down!"
Well, I've had enough. Today I'm sending out a message of my own to those of you who place your own needs for validation through mindless social interaction above my need for sanity and peace in my soul:
My love for Jesus does not depend upon whether I not I forward your text to 20+ people. And if it does, then screw you for putting me in that position. I could have spent my afterlife in paradise and you ruined it for me by sending me a CHAIN TEXT?! What the hell kind of friend are you, anyway?!
Stop it. Stop your banana nudity, your guilt trips and your threats.
Stop using my phone as a means to ruin this life AND the afterlife for me. Even if I did have unlimited text messaging, it's still a waste of texts. Things like what I talked about here should just not be said, ever.
If you don't desist, you can expect a whole new level of Guilt Tripping Chain Text from me, and I guarantee it will not be pretty. I will combine all three elements and add something else too, just to make it more interesting. You'll be so busy looking over your shoulder because you didn't even know five hundred people to forward my Level Four Threat To Your Present and Future Lifetimes chain text to EVER have time to send me one again.
At least YOU have been given an opportunity to avoid such a predicament!
Julie
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