Blutterbunged

I think it's the most amount exciting when we surprise our own selves. People who always do/think/say exactly what they sat and planned to do/think/say are boring, not just to other people but to themselves. But mainly to other people... Being predictable is something most people consider "comforting," people like to have a conversation with someone else and be able to say "I knew you were gonna say that!" It's like a soft gray flannel blanket on white sheets. Which is BORING. The conversations I have with myself inside my brain would be dismally dull if I kept repeating "I knew I was gonna say that!" at every turn. Trust me when I assure you that this doesn't happen. Living inside my brain is like traveling with an invisible toddler who's made up every movie/song line ever and has a flawless vocabulary, but alarmingly has control of my mouth.

Or fingers, as the case may be, seeing as I had no idea I was going to write all of that. My jumping off point was that I never thought I'd be happy to be back in a cubicle.

For those who don't know, which is everyone since I haven't blogged since I was 7, my current position at work is that of Senior Office Assistant. It's the next rung above Garden Variety Office Assistant, which isn't actually a rung so much as the bottom of bowling shoes. My main responsibility (*neatly sidesteps the hours of shrieking and yowling she could do about the contradictory and spontaneous oppositeness listed in her annual review*) has been to head up our efforts to become more "green." It's not easy....chortle....but we're taking decades worth of paperwork and scanning them into an imaging system rather than keeping them in file cabinets that crash onto passersby during earthquakes. The best part is that after a piece of paper is scanned it is either given to another unit or it is thrown away, which is my favorite. For this ground breaking process straight out of 1993, we have a designated Scanning Room. It's a room with 2 scanning stations set up (*neatly sidesteps the hours of weeping and blarfing she could do about how long it took to get those bloody stations working*) for 2 individuals to be scanning documents. Simultaneously! The room by its very nature is a multi-tasker because it is also where our water cooler is kept and where people who don't want to work wander in to gossip or be petty or gabble on about blue cardboard and giraffes. (*..........sidestep.........*)

So for the last year and change, I've come in to the office, gone to my personal desk, logged onto my personal computer, knitted a shawl, drawn a picture of a bear holding a beet, and then gathered up my worldly possessions to lumber off to The Scanning Room. You can see the tracks from my Ergo Humaniod Spacecraft chair (I got it after I got hurt, *sidestep*) ground deep into the floor between my desk and The Scanning Room. Especially since I lumber back to my desk for lunch, then back to TSR, then back to my desk at the end of the day. Pilgrimage, pumpkins. I got used to it after a while, and even started loathing my own computer after they put Vista on it. All my work was on the computer in TSR, tucked safely into the cracked and musty folds of Windows 2000. This was all ok while I was alone in there, with a whole room to my dastardly wiles.

But then the other pilgrims started to arrive....some even full time. More and more scanning needs surfaced for more and more people. It became more crowded inside the room than out. I didn't get my phone messages for hours. People with psychoses best known to themselves would sneak in there to go through my stuff and spy on my computer. (*misses the sidestep and plunges down the abyss onto the jutting crags of IHateEverything Ravine*) Perhaps if I were Lehi I'd take joy in the souls marching towards TSR, but I am no such thing and TSR is no such ToL. Soon we had to use the scanners in shifts because there was so much to do. Well. After some reflection I realized it wasn't the actual SCANNER I neeed, it was the software that the scanner functioned through. Which I could just as easily operate.... at my desk.......

Ahhhhhh.......:) All that's missing is palm trees and a hammock. I can listen to a song all the way through without interruption. I can put my naked feet up on my cube wall. I can answer my phone when it rings. I can point my little fan any which direction I please. I can pretend to work while I'm secretly reading or blogging and take furtive naps in PEACE.... the way the Deep Magic was written. I always thought I was claustrophobic in small spaces, but it turns out I was wrong. I'm claustrophobic of people. Walmart, Disneyland, the 10 freeway, all seemingly wide open spaces. Were it not for the slithering and scuttling racket of humans....

You guys should come visit me here in my soft little box. After I get the door installed on it we can eat chocolate chips and dance.

Chant Down Babylon