First, go here and read his stuff. His entries are concise and effective, and after yesterday’s entry, I sat there and stared at the screen for a minute or two, wondering how two paragraphs managed to whap me upside the head in such an erudite manner.
Today I worked, and laughed my ass off, then went to a meeting, then went to CM, then went to the gym and met with The Little General (TLG from now on). The working is pretty self-explanatory, I think. The laughing… Okay, this is not funny, and perhaps you’ll find it morbid, but I laughed so hard today I cried and my mascara ran.
There’s a guy at work – let’s call him Steve – and Steve is a moron. Steve is cheap, has a head shaped like an egg, and feels that silence will clearly kill him or us, since he talks all the time. Anyway, around 2:15 this afternoon, Steve announces that Andre Bolchenko is dead (I have no idea what the guy’s name actually was, but this will be suitably grandiose). I had just been on CNN, and hadn’t seen any famous dead guy newsflash. I briefly decided that he must be an opera singer and left it at that. Well, Steve wouldn’t shut up about it. He went on for almost five minutes about Dead Andre. Finally, Moe, who sits directly behind Steve, asks who the hell Andre was. Andre, it turns out, is not a terminated tenor, he’s a former Hell employee.
I’m already smiling to myself, because I’d imagined he was an opera singer, and to me, this is funny. Then Steve will not shut up about the fact that Andre loved animals. Small animals. Small dogs. Squirrels. Raccoons. Especially squirrels. But he’d had a raccoon as a pet. I’m now grinning broadly. Steve walks away. I turn to Moe and politely request that if I die, I do not want my sole saving grace to be the fact that I liked squirrels. Moe laughs. I’m laughing. It’s alllll good. Steve comes back. Still talking about the damn animals. ”He just loved animals. Small animals.” It’s like he had a mental illness and couldn’t help repeating the same words over and over.
Then, Steve decides that Andre had married an Asian woman, who weighed 110 lbs. (yes, he was that specific) and that they’d moved to Asia together. And that the Asian woman was quite a bit younger than Andre. Somehow, this information lead Steve to the conclusion that Andre had been murdered in Asia by his 110-lb. wife, who clearly had connections to the Asian Mob. At this point, I’m laughing, I can’t even hide it. I’m not sure at this point if Steve is clever enough to keep talking just to watch me laugh. A sales guy walks in. Steve begins to reiterate the fact that Andre is dead. Together, they discuss his age, his Asian wife. Moe sends me an email. It states, “…and he liked squirrels.” That’s it, I was done. Tears ran down my face. I can’t even type it without laughing. “Do you remember, he had a really big moustache. I remember his moustache,” Steve is saying to his sales guy. The whole damn thing is almost surreal. I’m looking around for the camera, while picturing a Czar Nicholas moustache on a really old man with a tiny indiscriminate Asian wife.
A sales guy comes in to talk to me. I try to pull myself together. I’m doing okay, talking about a customer. Moe sends me another email. This one is a picture of a squirrel. I have to excuse myself, and get up and run to the bathroom, where I sob with laughter in the stall. When I get back to my desk, there is a third and final email from Moe. I’m sputtering with laughter again. It states, “here’s what I learnt about Andre. He had a [clipart pic of a gigantic 'stache]. He [clipart of a smiling face] a lot. And he loved [clipart of a squirrel].”
Oh, hilarious.
I went to the Hell meeting (annual wrap-up), stayed long enough to have a glass of wine and some food and be thoroughly ignored by K.) and left. My ego was a tad bit bruised when he said hi to me, ignored me, and then got the pretty brown girl a glass of wine. *sigh*
I met with TLG and bought her ass twice a week for the next four months. It’s costing me A Great Sum Of Money. More than I even figured. Having said that, I did it anyway. I put it on my credit card, as that interest rate is better than what the club charges. She wants me to lose 30lbs. She’s not too concerned about my “lean mass” (meaning muscle) because it’s at 109.4lbs. I’m mostly muscle! That’s good, as a lot of her clients aren’t. It also means that since I stopped working out with her regularly, I’ve only dropped about six pounds of muscle. I know that’s a lot, but since I put on six pounds of muscle training with her, I’m not overly concerned about that small amount. So, the goal is to Lose Thirty By Thirty. I have three and a half months. She’s gonna work my ass hard, she said, for four months. Then I’ll have to maintain.
This feels like the last thing in my life over which I need some control. I’ve control over my finances (a lot of which will be used to pay my damn gym bill!), my family, my personal time… Yeah, I get lonely, but I’m in control. It’s stable. I’m solid. Strong. Independent. And damn it, I made out with a fireman!! lol. Now if I can get control over my body, we’ll be all good. Wish me luck. She said on the days that I’m working Hell & CM, I’m not to exercise but I must keep my calories between 1500 and 1800. Hmm, the “Candy” portion of CM might be out the window. And the days that I’m not working, I spend at least an hour if not two and a half at the gym. I can fluctuate between three days a week at the gym, followed by four days the next week. I shall have no social life. On the other hand, some of the gyms are co-ed, so…
Anyway, today was a busy day. I miss T. and I wish she was here.
