duck-shaped pain

I am making a list. This is a real day for lists. Lists are calming, they verge on soothing, and the writing and furrowed brow that they involve make it look like I'm doing actual work.

I grab a clean piece of paper and write:

Unintentionally Perverted Phrases in the Report I Am Currently Editing

1. Unnamed member

It's all I can do to keep myself amused.

8:30 a.m.

I hate this. I make the effort to come in early (no small feat during a week when I've been a) sleeping badly and b) trying to wake up even earlier than needed in order to have some decent writing time) and, when I get here, there's almost nothing for me to do.

Theoretically, I have a full day ahead of me. There's a list of what I assume are things for me to do propped up against the phone. I have to assume these things thanks to The Employer's hastily written scrawl. Deducing even the briefest note he writes becomes a marathon of translation. Numerous trips are taken between my workstation and his desk, question after question asked. "What the hell is that, a 't'?"

Not like any of this matters much once the package arrives.

I gave up my life last week to this one report. A big thick pile of papers, all intended to persuade the state of Colorado to allow our Client to do something with some holes they drilled last year. Endless government forms. Endless extra copies of those endless government forms. Lots of pages that take up space without saying much. All required by law.

2. Intertonguing [1]

Without a whole lot of guidance or any clear idea of what the whole point of this thing was, we had all pitched in many extra hours to get it out the door to the Client. And now it was back, scowling at everyone in the way only a unwieldy stack of unwanted paper can. Someone back in Texas had decided to actually look at the thing before submitting it to the proper authorities. Someone picky. Someone with a lot of red pens at their disposal, because the thing nearly swam in red ink.

I look at it. Okay, some of these corrections are needed. Some remedy dumb mistakes that we made in the first place. Some things that are marked were correct when they left us, and now they return to us "corrected," that is, changed to be incorrect.

Whoever had a hand in marking this up has a big beef with compound modifiers. Every time "oil shale" is used as an adjective, my precious hyphens have been rudely taken out. Lots of necessary commas have been taken out of commission. Some things which actually are a word have their existence questioned, and are replaced with terms which don't even come close to meaning the same thing.

Still, it's what the Client wants. Whatever they request, we give them.

So my task today is to keep this document from hemorrhaging. I've already given one life to it, one that I was not sad to lose. Why give another? I sit down and start looking through its wreck.

3. Heightened log response

9:20 a.m.

J. comes in. For once, we are not jostling for computer position. We have one computer and several employees that all need to use the computer at once. This used to not be a problem. There used to be a clear division between computer and non-computer work, and people were either one or the other. But now the official management policy is to assign jobs almost completely at random and then let us proles duke it out amongst each other.

J. is a jovial guy. I can be, too. Since, deep down, neither of us truly cares if our own personal assignment gets done today, we're happy to share the computer. I cede it to him without comment, leaving him to his tedious diagram-making task.

I am bored. This document was not interesting to begin with, but now, viewed through a mass of angry red ink, it is repellent. I have to do something to keep myself from getting frustrated as I look through it again.

4. Intensity of hole disturbance

I don't think I can explain how frustrating it is to be working on this. Each moment I look at it is one more brief moment of my late twenties lost. I try to concentrate, but my mind is on other things.

In the CD player is Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, something which I haven't listened to in far too long. Surprising, since at one time, I listened to it constantly. It was less a record than a self-contained ecosystem: you could live in it, breathe in it, and drink it in for weeks at a time without distraction. Other bands and records that I loved at the time I still love, but some things age less gracefully. CR, CR seems to have stayed in the same place, while I have moved on. Opening it up and listening through it, I recall flashes of memories of my life in Denver at the time. Hot, low-humidity nights. Driving around with nothing to do. Eating six-for-a-dollar heat-up burritos without end. Thrift-store shoes. Drinking beer on the patio and thinking up reasons to hate the people next door. [2] It's been what? A year? Two years? Something like that, since I've listened to this record all the way through. Maybe it's time to take the Pavement sticker [3] off my car. If it would come off.

5. Continued thrust and uplift

Page after page. Comment after comment. I mark the changes that have been officially made with a yellow highlighter, and circle the ones that need further clarification. I look some things up, inserting missing numbers and finding out the population of Rangely, Colorado. [4] Yellow notes mark the damage.

How can I get out of here? Maybe I can go to the post office and get some stamps or go out for lunch. I'd really like to go to the Thai restaurant and kick back while enjoying my pad siew and Thai coffee. Too bad they're closed for lunch today -- a one-time thing, but so inconvenient coming on a day in which I could use the fortification only rice noodles and sweetened condensed milk can provide.

6. Relentless deposition

I also want to go there to talk to J., the woman who runs the restaurant, about my ideas about going to Thailand later this year. She's a really nice woman, as befits someone who shares a nickname with both Jonathan Richman and a popular potato side dish for fried chicken. Maybe she can advise me on interesting places to go. Maybe she can help me learn some basic Thai. Or, maybe not.

Of course, this is all dependent on getting the agreement of The Employer, which is something I keep sort of bringing up, but there's never been a time to discuss it. I told him I wanted to get it settled this week, but then the Document of Doom arrived. Now it's the last thing on his mind.

7. Slowly dripping sediments

12:15 p.m.

No time to go out. I toast one of the bagels I have hidden away. It's not one that came from a real bagel bakery. It came from Safeway, and as much as they try to pass it off as a bagel, it's not. But it is sizeable and half of one makes an entire meal. Too bad we have such a bad toaster. You have to place half of the bagel in, toast it, take it out, stick the non-toasted half in, and repeat. It burns in spots and barely touches others. There is only fat-free cream cheese to be had, as I seem to have forgotten mine. I want rice noodles, dammit!

8. Up-hole penetration rate [5]

I look at the clock and it seems like I've been here for hours. It's only been four of those hours. I could go home. I have free will and all. But I need to work and save so that I can go on vacation, go back to school, do all sorts of things. I promise to myself that it all will be worth it. But sometimes I lie to myself.

[1] The unexpectedly thrilling word that gave me the idea for the whole list.

[2] Some things never change.

[3] Not like I put it there in the first place. It was sort of an act of friendly vandalism by my friend J., who saw the sticker, which someone had sent me, and decided in the heat of the moment that my car bumper was the place for it to be.

[4] 2,096, which I round up to 2,100. Easily understandable numbers make people happier.

[5] Maybe not unintentional.

previous | next