And you thought that TPS reports were bad

The following has been paraphrased based on a true conversation, except for what I made up.

From: Derperson & Co. HR Department
To: All Employees

We here at Derperson & Co. HR are fully committed to bringing you the best work place experience possible. To that end, the following policy changes have been implemented so that no one will have to be bothered by anything ever again:

1) If you have a complaint against someone for anything, no matter how small, make sure to communicate this anonymously with few details and no specifics, preferably in the form of a note slid under a locked office door. We all need some excitement and mystery in our lives after all.

2) Report everything. No matter whether or not a statement, action, or thought was communicated directly to you, if you find it the slightest bit offensive, best to not take chances and report it immediately following the guidelines of Rule #1. To ensure your complaint is the top priority, include the phrase 'sexual innuendo' in your note; you'll get the quickest action* that way.

3) If you feel that the HR department is not moving swiftly enough for your liking or has closed the file in a non-satisfactory manner to you, rewrite your complaint and send it to the corporate ethics hotline again anonymously and with few details. Feel free to add anything additional but make sure to not include any specifics. It's a good idea to invoke the 'unwanted physical contact' but refrain from mentioning whether your were the recipient of the contact or not. Emphasize that hugging was involved and that it bordered on an embrace. This will ensure that all other activities lose urgency in light of this fact.

4) Employees will now be required to wear opaque bubble-wrap suits to work to eliminate the possibility of exposed body parts that could offend someone with the added bonus of improving our safety record. Remember: you can't get injured or be seen if there's nothing to see. Report any violations in the manner as described above.

With your help we can make Derperson & Co. an even better place to work, free of any interaction with fellow coworkers at all. As everyone knows, HR has nothing better to do with their time than investigate vague complaints for weeks on end and doesn't really do anything the rest of the time anyway.

Sincerely,

The HR Department

*I guess we have to report ourselves now.

How multitasking almost killed me

In this day and age it seems that to get anything done, you need to be doing several other things besides the one thing that you need to get done otherwise you'll fall farther behind in life. Okay, fine, it's status quo but guess what? There are limits. Real, terrible limits. For your sake and the sake of all mankind I will share these.

I recently started exercising again and while I'm doing this for health, longevity, able to put off buying new clothes, etc., I hate it. I hate it specifically because it's an elliptical machine in the basement that I cleverly put directly underneath a light. It's isolated and boring, just run-gliding around and around so I distract myself to not think about the TV watching and jelly bean eating that was going on upstairs. First I just listened to music and scrolled through twitter. That helped some but I still knew what I was doing. So this go round I added in some reading of this month's book club book and lo! I had found the perfect set up: get the exercise, feel virtuous and non-hatey AND keep up on my reading! Three things. Totally manageable. I AM A GOLDEN GOD.

Then last night happened. I should have not even attempted this but go big or go home, right? I was participating in a really interesting facebook discussion over direction of another website I contribute content for. A really cool opportunity with a lot of ideas flying back and forth which was incredibly energizing. Off I headed downstairs with kindle, phone and water bottle in hand to do battle with my nemesis. Got set up on the elliptical with the screen completely covered, punched in the gradual climb program and off we went. Music blaring in my ears, one eye on the facebook conversation and another on the Kindle, I noticed that suddenly the difficulty of the program went up. Huh. That's weird. May have just hit the 'increase resistance' button while adjusting the diversions. Huh, now it's getting easier. Oh well, no biggie, we've just gone on to science advancements and alternate character plot points and holy hell this is getting hard again. What the hell...?

Oh. Crap. I'm on the interval program. I don't like the interval program but we're 10 minutes into the workout now, no going back, let's power through, good god almighty, 16?! Aw hell no. Oh, here's another message: no, I'm not caught up with Uncanny X-Men, what's happening? God, I hate this song but my brain is melting so I can't skip it and no a giant rat did NOT just chew on that kid's face. Yay, Dyl's come to save me...wait, why is he carrying the phone? So now I'm reading on my kindle, listening to music I've come to regret downloading and catching up on X-Men while trying to not fall off the elliptical...18???! Gasps. 'Hi Mom, what's up?' 

"Why don't you just call me back?"

"Good idea.....should be done....in....about....10 minutes.....Gasp. Wheeze."

Now I've got a water bottle, my kindle, my phone and the house phone all in front of me with no place to hang onto because shit just went to 20 and dear flying spaghetti monster, make it stop.

The lesson here boys and girls? Exercise will try to kill you. The end.

All of the tired is belonging to me

Alternate title: The Brain Cannot Convince The Body It's Not 22 Anymore aka I Still Make Very Dumb Decisions And I Wasn't Even Drunk. So yeah. It was a great weekend; we got to see practically the entire family and maybe even most important, finally got caught up on all the birthdays...dating back to last year. No matter! Caught up. Onward and forward and all that good stuff. And with all that family stuff comes traveling and with traveling with young children comes stuff which becomes even more stuff when said travelling occurs over a holiday. The kids are 6 and 3; this isn't our first rodeo and yet.

Saturday began early as it usually does because my children do not understand the concept of 'sleeping in it's the weekend for chrissake' and 'really, Mommy and Daddy do not really want to be up right now so would you please consider sleeping in?' The only bright spot was the Noelle did not have dance class due to Spring Break BUT Dylan had a lot of errands to run before heading to his mom's house for Easter/birthdays. I lucked out and didn't have to bring anything this time but still, we were in a time crunch. As usual. The kids played with their cousins at my mother-in-law's house but it was a really nice day and her house is on the small side so we took the kids to a nearby park where we followed a stream to a beaver dam, chucked rocks at the water, hiked back to the grassy field and played Frisbee and football for well over an hour before heading back for dinner and visiting. Because Sunday was Easter and they were outside running around, they had a bath even though it was very late and got them to bed at 9. No SyFy movie was on, or at least, no SyFy movie that the usual gang was going to watch so I prepped the sweet potatoes for Easter dinner then jumped on the computer to finish creating the gift certificate for my dad's birthday then had to check Twitter. As one does.

Well, because the usual gang didn't have a movie to snark on, our fearless leader tweeted out that he was bored and did anyone want to [Google] hang-out. Having just gotten all the plug-ins figured out that morning, I said sure, why not so off to Google hang out I went. After a while, Dyl joined us sharing my ear buds and soon one, then another Snarkalec came to play. And it was hysterical; we had such a good time playing with the features, offering predictions for the Walking Dead to be aired the next night, harassing each other that before we knew it, 5 hours had flown by and 3 AM was staring us in the face. At that point common sense woke up and was all, 'oh shit. We've got 4 hours before the kids get up because EASTER!!!!' And sure enough, 7:06 am Noelle bursts into the room wanting to look for Easter baskets. Thank GOD I hadn't been drinking or that would have been painful *coughdrunkenbirthdaysleepovercough*.

A few (awake) hours later, it was time to go to my parents' house for the family Easter egg hunt and dinner and 356 eggs plus assorted baskets later, the kids were running around, playing with their cousins, we were visiting and time flew by, we barely noticed how tired we were. We got home a little after 8 (thanks stupid drivers who don't know how to merge), decided no baths, got the kids ready for bed and were downstairs for the season finale of The Walking Dead by 8:45. Straightened up the kitchen and living room a bit for my MIL who is watching Noelle during the first part of Spring Break this week and assumed our positions on the sofa. This was the first episode I had watched since the very first one but followed recaps and analysis so knew enough of what was going on to be dangerous. Dangerously snarky that is. What? Gotta get my fix somewhere. Anyway, after the show of commercials interspersed with a few shots of zombies and/or batshit insane Governors, the finale was over and time for bed. But not because one MUST follow it up with the analysis show the Talking Dead and hey! 11 pm! How good to see you and why in the name of Grilled Cheezus did I not take off Monday? Sob.

The only bright spot of today? I can finally eat again. A small consolation prize but I'll take it. And now if you'll excuse me, Im'ma hide under my desk the rest of the day zzzzzz.

When sleeping will ruin your day

I love sleep. I love everything about sleep: the putting on of the jammies, the crawling into bed, the snuggling into blankets until it's Just Right, the super-stretching accompanied by the body expressing it's extreme displeasure at going past it's breaking point and I'll-Show-Her-Leg-Cramp-of-Excruciating-Pain.... Enter: the Charlie Horse.

I lot these suckers all the time when I was pregnant with Noah and it was always after stretching in my sleep. You ever try bolting upright from a sound sleep 8 months pregnant with what can be best described as a 3 month old in your uterus? No? You should totally try it sometime; it's AWESOME. So last night I was leaving REM sleep to dive deep down into the...non-REM sleep and it happened. Stretched that gastrocnemius past the point of no return and it was the red circle of death. Even asleep I knew it was happening and couldn't stop myself from doing it; the stretch was just too delicious. Until it wasn't.

As is custom, I bolted upright to try to massage it away but...ended up getting tangled in the covers. So it's the middle of the night, my leg is taunting me and I can't get to it because I can't get free of the damn blankets. After an eternity of thrashing around but was probably only around 15 seconds I was able to apply the sweet sweet relief of massage, whispering sweet nothings to my throbbing calf, false promises of never ever EVER doing that again. Finally collapsed back against the pillows and tumbled back into the waiting arms of Morpheus though at that point I was really wishing it was Morphinius because OwOwOw.

Then I got up to exercise which was an absolutely brilliant move resulting in the least-sexy limp in the history of limping all because I'm a masochistic moron.

Related: I'm pretty sure Herschel could beat me in a circle race today.