Spidercamp

best response i've ever gotten to a complaint letter about jigsaw puzzles

Hello,

Thank you for letting us know. We have passed your feedback along to the appropriate members of our team so that we can look into this issue further, and to make sure that our random pieces do not continue to look like swastikas.

Regards,
AtomShockwave Customer Support

well enough to get out of bed and put on pants

well enough to get out of bed and put on pants != well enough to go to work

forgot about screaming demanding hateful children. underestimated.

forgot to eat

forgot about droolingly brainless boss

words said by me in first five minutes of work: "get your hands out of there" and "please don't eat that" and "get your hands OUT of there" - tragically, all these directives had to do with little boys plundering bodily orifices; two related to noses, one to a butt. NOT ALL THEIR OWN ORIFICES EITHER

fever

learned KC's given name isn't KC, well, of course, but the story i found out today is that her real name is Katherine and middle name starts with C. she became KC for PARENTS' CONVENIENCE because they moved into a new neighborhood and there was already a little girl living on that block named katherine, and another one named katie, and a cathy too, so for the sake of CONVENIENCE they renamed her, at age 5, with a name she hates. i wouldnt do that to a dog. and neither would these people, theyd only do it to their children.

two kids playing school, the "teacher" is straight-up cruel from the beginning - the game STARTS with the "student" being in trouble and having to write a hundred sentences. poor kid cant even write her name. teacher-kid screams in her face, student-kid runs off, falls on the floor, wailing, scrawling all over her new white uniform shirt with a red marker in a display of anguish that i am totally unable to deal with. her parents will scream at her too.

i am very very very very very tired. very tired. the color drains from my face and heat rushes up , someone has the sense to say, Sit down, and i'm already there and hoping i stay on the chair and dont just melt on down to the floor. i dont.

gabby says i look like i dont feel so good, like dizzy or something. i say she is right on. she says shes sorry and that she knows its hard to walk around and have to do stuff when you dont feel so good. then she pats my hand. i want to cry but i settle for hugging her real hard. gabby says she knows just how i feel because she gets dizzy when she does too much math.

trying to ask my boss an actual god damned important question (in so many words "how the fuck am i supposed to keep any control over the kids if i am no longer allowed to give time outs, scold, deprive of privileges or punish in any way, acting instead as their enthusiastically subservient underling?") - a kid runs up with a rubber spider and wants to show it off. her correct response would be "wow, that's a great spider kiddo, why don't you go scare caroline with it while i'm having this conversation, be with you in a few minutes" because it is TOTALLY OK to let a child know you have other immediate priorities. healthy in fact.

but no, boss could suddenly not give a shit about my actual vital child-maintenance question, her mutant runty attention span only kicks in for words spoken by people age 6 and under, so we listen to "look at my spider! isnt it a great spider its made of rubber and it is my spider. i got it last year, no wait last christmas time. thats what i got. my spider. this spider here. that i have and it is mine. because i love it and santa brought it to me. its a spider. do you like my spider?" yammering for an unbelieveable amount of time, seriously about eight minutes while i just stand there floored by the fact that boss is at no point saying THATS ENOUGH KID and i am relegated to 2nd, 9th, last place of all possible places in her brain. my dingbat boss suffers from "all children are cute baby puppies NO MATTER WHAT" disorder, otherwise known as advanced preschool-teacher's disease, with the attention span of a denim jumper and the intelligence of a macaroni necklace. for this i got out of bed and put on pants.

Around midnight, a scritching noise

Around midnight, a scritching noise was coming up from the courtyard so I turned off my light and eased my window open to spy on whoever it was. A guy was sweeping up a huge mess of leaves and branches - storm damage, I guess. A young blonde woman in an amazing sweater (diagonally striped in black and hot pink, and very tight) stopped to admire the little pond, and he put the broom down to quietly point out the fish.

After she left, here were the noises: the broom coaxing leaves over concrete; the little streamlike gurgle of the fishpond's aerator; very faint, tinkling music; crickets all around; and, I swear, one slow and lazy whistle of a midnight train. It's quite a place to call home.

A doctor who never fails to make me feel better

A doctor who never fails to make me feel better is quite an asset. One who can do it over the internet is invaluable. As if he weren't already my hero, dude is going back to school to be a teacher (I wanna learn kids some bio). It makes me more than a little jealous of those kids.

---

The Shipping News is a good book by an amazing author. It's about a guy who has been told his whole life he's worth nothing, who shuffles from one shitty job to another, who suffers unreasonable cruelty from everybody who should love him, and who then gets sadder, and then it's about what happens after that. There's no magical turnaround and certainly no fucking moral about hitting rock bottom, just a man who slowly realizes that getting better is possible, and who does it.

I was convinced it had been picked as an Oprah Book Club book at some point, though it hasn't. Maybe that's the only logical reason my subconscious could come up with for why the movie was such a nauseous stinking heap of "television for women." This gentle, subtle book was transformed into absolute cheesy garbage. A shame.

---

Logan was being a bit of a jackass so I told him he was full of flute music. He said Hey! and pushed away from me, offended. Not twenty minutes later he was using his new webcam to show off his snow globe on the internet. But I put it in my blog, so who's the biggest fag?

The post office guy cheerfully lectured us

(old news)

The post office guy cheerfully lectured us about marriage ("Boy, if you aint ready to give up football just yet, better give it some time fore you settle down, cause she gonna want to go to the mall every time there's a game on."), Jesus ("Thassa good name to call out. That what keep me going."), and credit cards ("Best you cut em up while you can."). Between Jesus and credit cards he sang a chorus of zip a dee doo dah. We were staggered.

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I dreamed about a perv in a lab coat who wanted to be called AbCo for short. And I dreamed about a woman named Zh, whose name everyone kept saying at regular intervals, until I woke up and realized it was Logan snoring, zh, zh.

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Another reason I could never cheat on Logan: I do a crossword puzzle without him, and it feels like a betrayal.

the Bookmaster makes me blush

I have a cold, cramps, and a badly bruised foot, so rather than explain all day why I'm sneezing, cringing, and limping, I call in sick to work and go to the library. I haven't done a lick of work in days so I figure I might as well eat some books to balance the vast quantity of television I'm sucking down.

While I'm browsing, the Bookmaster comes round a corner and I feel myself flush bright red. What embarasses me is not my pallor, sniffles, possible sickbed body odor, or haphazard "I'm sick, who gives a damn" outfit. It's the fact that I'm holding an armload of Terry Pratchett, William Gibson, and children's books on Abraham Lincoln.

Once I tried to cheat my way into a relationship by buying new perfume and pretending to be dazzled by the intricacies of financial planning. I don't know why. I've done a lot of dumb shit. It is in much the same spirit that I reach for an Italo Calvino which I have already read, so the Bookmaster will see it and know that I am a woman of many tastes, occasionally very respectable and literary ones.

I don't know if I would ordinarily have done this. I have a fever. Being sick means feeling sorry for myself, which feels a lot like loneliness, and I just want the Bookmaster to like me and to talk to me about books. He hesitates for a moment at my side. I think, This is it, this is the moment when he will say, Ah. That's one of my favorites. Have you read this one? And he will pull from the stacks a book I've never heard of, which might not exist for me otherwise, and it will, of course, be one of the most wonderful things I'll ever read.

Today, though, the Bookmaster simply smiles and murmurs, humbly, Excuse me. Because I am standing, in my motionless hot stupor, right in his way.

do you ever

"Do you ever think about what it would be like if we hadn't met?"

"No."

Last night a bunch of Young Republicans

Last night a bunch of Young Republicans stood in the courtyard cheerfully opinionating for an hour. Half the conversation was "That's true, Dave, you're right, you're completely right about that!" I wished the hurricane would hurry up, but then I was sorry because it showed up overnight and the power went out.

The venison spoiled, but I did not give a damn because I didn't have to go to work. I wasn't sure about that, because the radio wasn't giving up any details about how widespread the power outage was, or downed trees, or freeways in flames or anything helpful at all. The power being out in my building isn't reason enough not to go to work, so, though I figured things out there were pretty bad (the sirens started at 5 am and didn't stop till after noon) I called my boss to see what was up. She was surprised to hear from me and said, "Oh! I almost called you. But then I didn't." Way to wield authority, dumbass. Way to manage people. Way to do your freaking job.

Whatever. Logan can't do his job without the interweb so we went to our friendly neighborhood coffeeshop-with-wireless-internet-and-also-sofas-and-icecream. I read two books which each required I keep the house dictionary handy, Red Dog because the author is Australian, Mysteries of Pittsburgh because the author is Michael Chabon.

I was a little frustrated not to be at home and typing (paper doesn't work except for making notes), but it wasn't so bad - I was in a dry place with hot coffee and brie sandwiches and a handsome man. Frenchie, who had a weird melancholy about him today and stood staring out the window at the rain, said that this too shall pass, that we're better off than a lot of the 300,000 people in Atlanta without power and we ought to be thankful that we live in a safe building filled with good neighbors looking out for each other. He also said nobody gonna mess with Cookie Lady, and that's true, too.

The wonderful irony of all this is that the writing assignment I was supposed to work on today was a story about a blackout. Universe, you're such a card.

She un-quit. My salvation.

She un-quit. My salvation.

We're all so frigging disgusted with the way the new woman is running (failing to run) the program that we've actually started thinking of ways the old director was better. Sure, she was a thief and a liar and a bitch and hated children, but she sure knew how to organize the place. Co-worker who did not quit after all said it best: "It's like moving to Soviet Russia and, every once in a while, thinking back fondly on life in Nazi Germany. It sucked, but at least there was always toilet paper."

---

I'm trying to resist the temptation to name the Bookmaster. I don't know his name but no one's ever looked more like a Leo, except maybe the one Leo I've ever met. The library's computer system was completely dead the other day, which meant all checkouts had to be written out by hand, and I couldn't have been happier to wait in line because I knew when it was my turn I'd have quite a lot of counter time with the Bookmaster. He's so wonderful. His voice is NPR smooth and his heavy eyelids just kill me. We didn't even say anything important but when I walked away from the counter, I felt like I'd been given a foot massage.

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I got to work a little early today and discovered something. Usually when I get there, the bus (singular. the school is that charmingly small) is parked by the curb at the front entrance. Today I found out that, due to idiotic traffic flow caused by year-old construction work, Creepy Steve has to BACK it into position. This involves turning the thing around in a narrow residential street, on a HILL no less, then backing it up a tight channel in the parking lot for a distance of about a city block before swinging it into its spot alongside the curb. Not only this, but dude PARALLEL PARKED it between two SUVs. He did it fast, too, without hesitation. He's practiced it every day for a year or more, but still, damn.

Sadly I made the mistake of complimenting Creepy Steve on the skills. I once listened to him tell a story the whole way through. I was sorry about that too. Because of the compliment, he tried to buy me a drink. That sounds pretty innocent unless you know that he was leaning in what I think he thought was a suave, manly manner against a Coke machine, sneering lewdly at me from under his enormous bushy mustache. Yeah. Thanks but no thanks, polo shirt. Then he showed me his, I am not kidding, SCHOOL BUS RELATED HUMOROUS IMAGE that he PRINTED off the INTERNET.

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If I owe you something in the mail, I'm a jackass and I'm sorry. I've been scattered and bad lately but I'm going to try to do better, if only in the postal department. Fun stuff will be on the way soon.

On Blondes - Joanna Pitman

In "On Blondes," Pitman traces the social significance of blonde hair through history. Her tone is never snide or haughty - she (a brunette) is simply fascinated by the world of different reactions yellow hair may provoke. The book runs from Aphrodite to Margaret Thatcher RuPaul; I'm only up to Mary Magdalene. Here's my favorite part so far, a scathing passage against women's cosmetic fakery written by the Roman poet Martial in the first century AD:

Although, yourself at home, you are arrayed in the middle of the Suburba, and your tresses, Galla, are manufactured far away, and you lay aside your teeth at night, just as you do your silk dresses, and you lie stored away in a hundred caskets, and your face does not sleep with you - yet you wink with that eyebrow which has been brought out for you in the morning, and no respect moves you for your outworn carcass - which you may now count as one of your ancestors. Nevertheless you offer me an infinity of delights.

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Having finished it, I can say it absolutely lived up to my early expectations. Every chapter's interesting in a different way, especially the one on the freaky and misguided Aryan perception of blondeness. Up until that point I'd completely forgotten about those guys. Pitman does an excellent job of leading the reader down dozens of historical trains of thought, while maintaining a pretty cohesive narrative structure. There's way more to know about blonde hair than I ever would have guessed, and, told this way, it's fascinating.

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"On Blondes" may be purchased via Powell's here.