stress relief

So there is all kinds of crap going on.

Moving is stressful. Living with piles of boxes and trying to figure out how we will get the couch into the new house and wondering when I will have a day off to unpack...well, it is hard for me. The idea of entering into a situation where everything is not EXACTLY where it belongs really screws with my OCD.

Starting a new job is stressful. Even though I am awesome and smart and learn quickly and am very much enjoying myself, it is a hard job and it is taking its toll on me, more so than the usual "I don't know anyone's name or, even, where the bathroom is" new-job phase does.

There are other things kind of stressing me out, too, things that I think about a lot but are not anyone's business but the people to whom they belong, so we will acknowledge the stress and then we will move on.

So I will tell you a story.

There is a beautiful six-year old German Shepherd mix in the shelter, with one floppy ear and one perky ear, and he is timid and scared and a little goofy because I don't think he ever got out much. But he's kind and gentle and sweet and I love him, and I stop and say hello to him when I walk down the kennel, and I noticed that recently he has been kind of loud. All the time. Constantly. I stop and say "hello doggie, how are you today FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOULD YOU PLEASE SHUT UP" and then my ears start to ring and I run back to my office where it is quiet and sane and only the rooster crowing or the hens clucking disturb my work.

He went to an adoption event on Sunday, and as the volunteer walked him out to the van I noticed that he IMMEDIATELY stopped to relieve himself. Which made me think "oh yay, he's housebroken!" But today, with the barking and the nonstop noise and the barking and oh my god the barking, I started to think, wait, he's housebroken. So housebroken, perhaps, that he won't even use the outside part of the kennel. And maybe he's trying to tell us that he needs to go out. Like, NOW. So I grabbed a leash and walked to his run and there he was, barking and jumping and barking some more. I took him out, and he bolted for the field, and immediately began to relieve himself all over the place. I mean, all over the place, like, seven different times. And he looked at me, and he looked so grateful and relieved and happy that I puffed up with pride and self-importance. I was so proud of myself for taking time out of my day to help this dog feel better, for stepping away from my desk and doing something that's not necessarily in my job description, for going above and beyond and oh, wait.

Because it had just occurred to me that, now that the contents of his stomach were deposited all over the dog field, somebody had to clean it up. And that somebody was, yeah, the recent yuppie Banana-wearing desk-jockeying metro-riding new girl, aka me.

I looked at the dog, the field, the dog. He looked back at me, ear flopped, eyes curious. I sighed, picked up a baggie, stretched out my hand. Gagged a little. Seven different places, for the love of god. I did what I had to do. Returned him to his run. He flopped over on his bed, happy, sleepy, and thank god, quiet.

This, I think, is why I have cats.

this is why they all tease me at work

Did y'all even notice what Whitey McWhitechick said in her previous post? "It's not like I'm driving onto the set of Boyz From the Hood."

I must've watched that movie a dozen times when I had to do a paper on it in my American Studies senior seminar, and I still don't know the damn thing is called "Boyz N the Hood."

The night desk guy is going to have to work overtime on my street cred.

a tale of two cities

My old job was in Foggy Bottom, one block from lobbyist-heavy K Street and four from the corruption-tainted White House. Each day I battled hurried yuppies and ostentatiously badged government workers on the Metro, walked past luxury high-rises, pausing at the Watergate while Condi's security convoy escorted her to work, buffeted by Ann Taylor sweater sets and Brooks Brothers suits hustling by on their way to lobby for change and manage money and write laws. On special occasions my colleagues and I would lunch at Legal Seafood, downing Sam Adams and listening to the hushed rustlings of greed, of power, of self-importance. We would hit the diviest dive bars we could for happy hour, in an attempt to avoid rubbing elbows with rolled-up blue oxford sleeves and loosened school ties. I bought into it, too, finding myself puffing just a little when I would too-casually tell someone "I work in The City."

My new job takes me a bit further into the same city. I crank up Dylan or maybe the Dixie Chicks and (if I'm lucky and traffic's light) fly past the monuments and up, up over the bridge past the Capitol gleaming with hope and promise in the morning sun. Traffic backs up here and I inch down the ramp towards the tunnel, passing under the lane designation signs: "The House" and "The Senate/Mass Ave." This is where it all happens: this is where the country is run. Now I'm under the city, travelling directly beneath the bustling busy expensively suited lawmakers and aides and lobbyists and filibusters and briefings and scandals. When I come up out of the tunnel, I'm still in DC, but things are different here, here in my new part of town. (Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! Stop reading!)

I'm not going to make it out to be worse than it is; I'm not driving onto the set of Boyz From the Hood. It's daylight, and there are commuters crowding the road, and school buses trundle by and the huge newspaper building rises up stark and solemn and gentrified over it all, crawling with security guards. But there are liquor stores, and halfway houses, and mission groups. Glass bottles litter the gutters, and the windows are barred and the buildings are run down, drooping, dulled. It's not a place I'd want to be at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, or, really, any night and I'm grateful that the latest I ever have to stay is 8 p.m. and by then the roads are clear and I just zip right down into the tunnel and out onto the freeway. I'm grateful for the night desk guy who likes to teach me cool handshakes and doesn't blink when I ask him to walk me out to my car on those weekly late nights. Most of all, I'm grateful that I don't live here.

I've lived in Arlington and worked in DC long enough that I hardly even notice the towering monuments, the stark solemnity of the Pentagon, the graceful beauty of Arlington Cemetery. It's just like when I lived in Charlottesville and couldn't understand why people came from all over the country to see Monticello (the novelty wears off after the third field trip), or when I went to W&M and scoffed at the tourists vacationing in Colonial Williamsburg. But I've been noticing DC lately, on my commute. I've been noticing the Capitol and the executive buildings and the landmarks. I've noticed that, when I'm not in rush hour, it only takes me 18 minutes to get from my house in Yuppieville, through the seat of government, to the edge of poverty. And I drive slow, like a country girl lost in the big city.

I can understand why the government seems so out of touch with what's going on in the rest of the country. DC is its own little compound, an enclave of money and power puffed up on self-importance and high-minded theory and utterly oblivious to the day-to-day lives its constituents lead. It's an hour's drive to the closest small farm, so I can accept that the administration may not be able to empathize with small farmers crushed under the weight of corporate agriculture, selling off heads of cattle and wondering if they'll have enough to see them through the winter. But I cannot understand how the machine grinds on, pouring money into endless wars, cutting social programs, bumbling educational policy, widening the gap between those that have and those that steal, when the evidence, the effects, are literally sitting right outside the windows of those fancy Capitol Hill offices.

How do you turn a blind eye to the poverty and violence and despair in your own back yard?

with everything going on, i have nothing to say

I warned you the blogging would suffer.

It's a very different thing, my new job. Instead of getting all of my work done by noon and sitting aimlessly at my computer searching for jobs and occasionally throwing in a blog entry to kill time, I'm actually so busy the day flies by and sometimes I forget to eat lunch.

My coping mechanisms are taking a beating. I haven't sat in on a euthanasia, yet, but a few animals to whom I felt a personal connection have been put down and that's hard, it's sad, it bothers me but it also bothers me that it doesn't bother me as much as I feel like it should. If that makes sense. What is starting to get to me is that it seems like every time I go up to the front desk to make a copy or put something away, someone's up there giving up their animal. "She bit me." "He smells bad." "There's nobody to take care of it." I don't interact with these people; it's partly not my job but it's also partly that I can't trust myself not to judge them, scorn them, scowl at them. And I'm not sure at all how I'm going to cope with possibly years of seeing it day in and day out, how it will affect my impression of people, how I will stop myself from assuming the worst in everyone off the bat, guilty until proven worthy. Today I walked past the front desk and there was a dog, a little white terrier, cowering sick and dirty and scared and shivering in a ratty cardboard box, its sunken eyes rolling and the stench of neglect and despair filling the room, and I kept walking, eyes averted, suddenly very busy. And I felt awful--I should have stopped, stroked its head, spoken softly, given it a moment of comfort before its inevitable end. That's the point, that's why I'm there, that's why I took the pay cut and make the commute and let my life get eaten up by this job: to provide what comfort I can, to make an animal's life just a little better in some small way. But I didn't.

Meanwhile, I bought a house. This is insanity, really. My absentee landlord has decided to sell our current abode and now I have to figure out how to convince him that he shouldn't sell it until after we're gone because I cannot fathom how I will make this place presentable while I am trying to move out of it.

And all I can think about is my complete inadequacy in what has never seemed an imporant facet of adulthood but now looms dramatically in my future: decorating. My new house (!!!) has hardwood floors in the main level and I feel strongly that there should be, like, rugs but I have no idea how, or where, one goes about purchasing rugs. What colors do I pick? Are there superior and inferior fabrics? Is there math involved?

It is a very good thing that February sweeps are over with because I can't do all of these things while there is good TV on.