Monthly Archives: February 2004

Forward planning a little too much

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Possibly, the urge to plan ahead isn’t always one of my greatest virtues.

For instance, on my walk home yesterday I found myself musing on the notion that we should probably plan our funerals together some time. Well, it seems like a natural progression from planning the wedding (if you’re in my warped little head).

But really, think about it. A funeral is really all about comforting those left behind, giving them closure and a chance to celebrate the life that’s come to an end. But people always want to organize the funeral based on “what she would have wanted.” So it only makes sense to leave some guidelines, to ensure that it does turn out to be what you would have wanted (not that you’ll give a rat’s ass at the time, I imagine) and, more importantly, to help the people organizing it so they don’t have so much to do and aren’t left making all the hard decisions on their own. And they can be happy knowing that it is, in fact, what you wanted. (Or at least, what you professed to want back whenever you did all the planning.)

And it’s definitely the sort of thing best planned when in the whole of one’s health and the prime of life, so that it doesn’t seem morbid and is just a good chance to plan a party/mass/mausoleum/whatever you’re having yourself.

Stuffed to the gills

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I work with engineers. I’m not an engineer, I just answer the phone and correct their grammar (the engineers’ grammar, not that of the people on the phone. Unless I’m feeling particularly cranky.)

Anyway, engineers are funny people. Sometimes even hilarious. At Christmas they had a competition. The week before the holidays, they all weighed in (on a scientifically calibrated scale, of course). When we came back this Monday they weighed in again. The people who gained the most and least weight over the break won. The prize is that all the other competitors take them out to lunch.
Funnily enough, all the competitors were male. There are a few females in the lab, but we disdained such childish fun and games. And the notion of having our most private numbers totted up and bandied about for all to see.

So the results were out on Tuesday. The winner gained three pounds, the loser somehow managed to lose three pounds, and all the numbers were put into a spreadsheet where you could see everyone’s details, as well as means and modes and breakdowns of net weight gained and lost in the group according to ethnic heritage (we’ve a lot of Indians here, and for some reason they lost weight instead of gaining; maybe it was the stress of being far from home when everyone else was being stuffed to the gills by their mothers).

I know I didn’t participate, but I wonder would they still let me tag along for the prize lunch?

Paranoia

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Yesterday I forgot to wear my engagement ring. I hate it when I do that. I only realised when I went to bed, when I looked at my finger and realised I didn’t remember taking my ring off that evening. I had to get up and check that it was there in my little trinket box, because any day I forget to wear it I’m convinced that the burglars will have got in and zoned straight in on my little heart-shaped pink china dish thingy, ignoring the much more obvious DVD player (being the only other thing of any value in the house) and leaving everything perfectly tidy and locking the door behind them. It was there, safe and sound. I almost took it out and wore it to bed to make up for its day of neglect, but it’s a bit too pointy to wear in my sleep.

I’ll be nice when I’m married, though, and I won’t need to take that ring off at all. Somehow, on days when I don’t wear my ring I fear that I’m just that bit less engaged. If I never have to take my wedding ring off, I’ll always be completely married.

Possibly it’s not so good to equate the status quite so closely with the ring-wearing. What can I say – I’m a sucker for symbols.

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Cyborg vision

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My new contact lenses hurt my eyes. That is, I wore them yesterday and today my eyes hurt. These are the lenses approved by the FDA for people with dry eyes. I think they’re making my eyes dryer, if the fact that they’d practically adhered to my eyeballs by last night is anything to go by. And my eyes were red when I got up this morning, which can’t be a good sign. If they’re not able to rehydrate themselves behind closed lids when they’re doing nothing more strenuous than a little REM for eight hours, how can they be expected to be any good staring at a monitor all day?

Sometimes when it happens that my lenses refuse to come out, I think that perhaps they really have fused to my eyes and that in a wonderful cyborg-like spontaneous scientific advance, my vision will be perfect from now on. Not, as is more likely, that I’d get a horrible infection and go blind, as is probably the more likely outcome of leaving one’s lenses in For Ever.

Scene: Deserted office. Red-eyed worker blows her nose loudly.
A, entering: Oh. Sorry. Are you okay? [Tentatively, not really wanting to let herself in for an hour’s sobbing and the minutae of someone else’s love life] Did, um, something happen?
B, blinking away the tears and squinting at the blur in the doorway: No, [sniffs] no, [dabs at eyes], I’m fine [trumpets into paper hanky]. Just playing too much Minesweeper and going blind.
A, exiting in haste: Oh. Right. Well, I’ll just go, then.

Note to self: Stop playing Minesweeper.

3:36 pm – 03 February 2004

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Sober sleepy grumpy me

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This weekend we went to a Superbowl party and I got grumpy. I’d like to say that my sleep patterns are disturbed, but that would be stretching the truth. My pattern goes like this: I sleep a lot. And it appears that I need it all. (No, I’ve had the blood tests and there’s no physical reason for it. I just likes me bed.) On Friday night I slept for about 11 hours, minus a little while around 1am and again at 4am when I was awake because I could only breathe through half of my nose and the other half was on the verge of needing to be blown. Yes, you’re glad I told you that. On Saturday night I slept for about nine hours. On Sunday evening, having done very little during the day except some light grocery shopping and a few hours of editing, I went to a Superbowl party and by the second quarter my eyelids were drooping. I napped through most of the rest of the game, and woke up only in order to be narky that we weren’t out the door the very second the stupid thing was over, just because some people were unreasonable enough to want coffee.

Herewith my excuses. On Friday night I was extra tired because I was still getting over Thursday night, when I had too much beer and only about five-and-a-half hours’ sleep, and I had fainted in the morning to boot. On Saturday night, um, well, I’d done the long pilates tape that day, which is a whole 50 consecutive minutes of exercise. And I have this dragging-out cold thing going on, with the phlegm and the stuffy. And most significantly, American Football is incredibly boring. The game was about three hours too long, and of course the one hour where I was paying attention – the first – was the least interesting of the whole thing, with no scores at all. I perked up a bit to snark happily at the half-time show, and I swear I saw the Janet Jackson’s Boob Moment, but nobody else said anything so I decided it was evidently the product of my fevered mind. And then the darkness claimed me. Again. Oh, also, I wasn’t drinking much (see Thursday night, above) so I didn’t have the alcohol-induced chirpyness that can sometimes work to keep me awake. Yes, you can have tipsy awake funny me, or sober sleepy grumpy me. No wonder people keep plying me with beer.
3:37 pm – 02 February 2004