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Thursday, January 2, 2014

Not exactly AWOL

In a scene from one of my favorite TV programs, an RAF flyer has gone nearly AWOL. He turns up on his girlfriend's doorstep and she takes him into the parlor where he has a mini-meltdown.

Please don't make me go back. I can't. I'm so tired. I can't.

I reenacted that scene yesterday when it was time to tear myself away from Georgia and return to real life (read: work, sleep, watch Turner Classic Movies) in Indiana. Neither Sophie nor the cats who looked disgustedly on were all that moved by my self-pitying display.  Thankfully not one of them uttered what we were all thinking.

You asshole.  You chose this situation.

So here I am again in my 8 x 14 self-exile.  Watching Turner Classic Movies (hey, silent films starring Joan Crawford!), wrist deep in a bag of Pepperidge Farm Brussels. Still feeling like an asshole because I'm actually comparing this situation to flying sorties and delivering death and destruction upon fellow human beings.

The worst I had to deal with today was driving in snow (thank goodness for muscle memory) and a boss who thinks it's okay to place her personal mail on my desk and expect me to not only add postage to it and deliver it to the mailbox but to also seal the envelopes. I'm here to tell you that my tongue has been better places.

That's not war, that's middle-aged women behaving badly.

The only redeeming thing I did today was give a random hug to one of my coworkers. I think we both needed it. Things were hinkey in Suite 450.  It was as if each of us had made a resolution to be muddle-headed.

I don't know what possessed me to do it. Perhaps it's that recurring theme in things I've been forced to read on Facebook and Pinterest in the form of boxed quotes.  Kindness matters... A smile costs you nothing. (Tell that to my mother who paid for my orthodontia.)

Et cetera.

And so it came to be that I was embracing my mildly shocked coworker in the middle of the morning and through no fault of her own.  I still don't know the origins, but considering that I have, in fact, flown a few sorties of my own, spreading destruction, if not death, a hug is the least I can do.

P.S. Comments are off. I mean, after this horrifying narrative, what could you possibly say?  Exactly.