All the books, all the sex

How bored I am … [to the tune of How Great Thou Art]... how booooored I am. I did Nothing Whatsoever last week, bar about ten minutes’ worth of proofing. I really want to tell my boss that I think I should stop working for them because it’s such a waste of their money, but then I’d have no job. (I use the terms “working” and “job” as loosely as possible there.)

People who can’t spell lose annoy me. Loose = adjective, not tight. Lose = verb, opposite of find. It’s really not that hard.

Sw’anyway. I went to the doctor last week for some new pills. And she wrote on her notes for my file, “Stop taking pill three months before you want to get pregnant.” Right there in black and white as if it might actually happen. Eep. (Yes, I did mention the possibility of the baby-making plan to her, she didn’t just look at me and decide it was about time I procreated.) Anyway, she took it all in her stride as if it was a perfectly resonable thing to propose, and didn’t say, “Are you mad? You’ll never sleep again, you know. You’ll never finish a book longer than Hop on Pop and your conversations will revolve around poo. You’ll never have sex again, this is by far the flattest your stomach will ever be for the Rest of Your Life, and, you idiots, you don’t even own a house or know what continent you’ll be living on in two years’ time.”

So maybe it’s a runner. Which, of course, is terrifying. Better read all the books and have all the sex now, while we can.

Pie opportunity

I don’t think I ever got around to writing about the frito pie, did I? Okay then.

Culinary delights of south Texas, part umpty. Actually, I don’t know if this is native to south Texas or Mexico, or the midwest, or where. But it seems to me like the ultimate trailer trash food. (I mean that in a totally non-insulting, Nigella Lawson way. Though I have to admit that it repulsed me, and I don’t know if Nigella would condone it. But maybe I’m just missing the greatest taste ever, like her recipe for ham cooked in Coke. I haven’t tried that either, but I totally would. Anyway.)

So there was a winter celebration or some such “it’s Christmas but we can’t call it that” event for all the staff back in December. We had fun carnival games like ring tossing and pie throwing and tins of cans knocking over, and they had burgers and hot dogs and frito pies. I joined the frito pie line because it was shortest and everyone at my table was headed that way, and as we shuffled along I asked what a frito pie was. “Chilli and cheese”, they said. Okay. We got closer and I watched what was happening at the top of the queue. First the people doling out the food would pick up a packet of Fritos. (Fritos are corn chips, very bad for you and tasty in that way where you can feel the fat slither straight from your gullet onto your hips but you Can’t Stop Eating until the bag is empty. Luckily, they make the bags fairly small. I honestly can’t think of an Irish equivalent. Let’s say it’s like a packet of Rancheros, just for comparison.)

So, they take the Fritos. They cut along the side of the pack to open it as wide as possible. Then they take a ladle of chilli and pour it STRAIGHT OVER THE CHIPS IN THE PACKET. Followed swiftly by a ladleful of cheese sauce. (I’m sure that should be cheez sauce. The really synthetic luminous sort.)

Hey presto, Frito pie! Eat it with a plastic fork.

I goggled quietly and moved to the hamburger queue instead.

For the record, I didn’t try it so all I’m saying is that it looked gross. If it tastes like ambrosia and/or is the signature dish of your region/family/tribe, well good for you and I clearly missed a treat. And I’m aware that my capitalization of Frito is erratic. I did it on purpose.

Righteous indignation

I realise that commuting by bicycle is pretty unusual in this town. I’m used to getting funny looks, especially since I do sensible things like wear a helmet and a reflective belt when I cycle home from work. I know that the notion of cycling to get somewhere you need to be when you actually own a functioning, fuel-filled car is a bit hard to process for a lot of people here. And I’m reconciled to the fact that almost the only other person over the age of ten that I’ve seen on a bike has been a small Mexican man with bananas in his front basket.

So as I wend my merry way home, musing on tonight’s dinner or how I just might do some pilates today, I expect to get a few looks of curiosity, interest, or even amuseument. I don’t, however, expect a large red SUV full of grown men to swing by, to hear shouts and laughter, and see a handful of ice fired straight at me from the passenger window.

Yes, grown men threw stuff at me for fun, because I was on a bicycle. What are you, six? I wasn’t even wearing shorts - not that that would excuse it in the least, but I suppose I might think it made me a bit more conspicuous. Oh wait, I was on a bike. There’s all the conspicuousness I needed.

Most of the ice fell short but some hit me, one piece got me on the chest hard enough to hurt a bit and leave a wet mark on my t-shirt that lasted all the way home. They could have put my eye out, you know. Once I’d recovered from the sheer amazement, I moved rapidly to fury and swore loudly at them (when I should have been looking at their licence plate). A little futher on, a man whose car was blocking my way said “Are you okay?” as I swerved around him. Still jarred, I didn’t know if he was coming on to me or what, and just said “Fine” in a high-pitched, sod-off sort of voice. I turned around to see him getting back into his car and I realised he’d actually seen what happened and stopped to make sure I was all right. Which was really decent of him. And I’d just been rude. Which made me feel worse. If you’re reading, sorry for being so snotty, and thank you. I hope you realised I thought you were just another person getting on my case for riding a bike. For heaven’s sake.

Malingering with intent

Work update: I talked, he listened, so far nothing has changed. We’ll see. In the meantime, I just e-mailed the copy-editor of the local newspaper about maybe getting some part time work or even just going in for free. The worst she can do is ignore me, which would make no difference. I love e-mail, though I know if I was a Proper Person I’d ring up instead. But I hate cold calling.

The weekend was lovely; we bought bookshelves, so there is now more order in our lives and room for lots more books. We had friends to dinner twice (once planned and once spur of the moment; same friends both times). We went to the cinema and watched a video. We bought cute things for new babies.

Yesterday morning I was feeling weird, slightly dizzy and slightly woozy and generally a bit rough with no hint of alcohol on Saturday night to blame it on. So I decided to be pretend-sick, which meant I was allowed to watch telly and not do anything. It was very restorative, and I discovered why everyone raves about Queer Eye. It’s like What Not to Wear and about seven other home-décor (my god, Word just put that accent on by magic), date-doctor, makeover shows all in one, with hilariously irreverant gay men trash-talking their poor victim’s taste. Fabulous. Also fabulous is the fashion-designer reality show with Austin, who they’re obviously just keeping in because he gives great melodrama, with his lipgloss and his hairclips and his bawling into the cushion because he’s going to lose, and then because that poor girl made the terrible mistake of being modest for a moment and said she herself was the weakest team member, so she was booted off, Austin bawled again, this time because he’s still in the game.

I tell you, pretending to be sick is the greatest. Luckily I recovered in time to go and see Kinsey and then drink some wine with my lovingly-home-made-and-not-by-me pizza.

How to manage your manager

I am frustrated by my job, and my boss. Let us call him Mr Bossman, for anonymity. And for the record, he’s really a lovely man. He just drives me insane and I’m not sure if it’s my fault or his that I sit here doing nothing day in day out.

I am also frustrated by my inability to explain exactly what’s wrong, so I tried to set it out for myself. Here’s what I came up with:

• I am the first person to hold this position, so the role is not clearly defined.
• My boss has difficulty communicating things to me – what’s going on, what we need, what I should be doing. I think this stems from the fact that he’s not used to delegating the work that I should be doing. Before I was here, he did it himself (or it didn’t get done).
• Work in this office is done on a reactive basis – nothing is tackled until there's a pressing need for it. My presence should help us be proactive, but it’s difficult for Mr Bossman to change his attitude and look beyond today’s immediate crisis.
• I can rarely help with today's immediate crisis, beyond proofing a memo or two, so I sit around waiting for him to have a quiet day when I can get him to consider what we need to do in the long term, which should provide me with something to do. I sit around a lot.
• I know there is work for me there, but I can’t generate it for myself. I seriously don’t think this is a failing on my part: surely a duty of a manager is to tell their underlings what to do. Especially at the beginning, which is still where I consider myself to be. So how do I get my hands on the work? I need to figure out how to manage my boss.
• I have no knowledge of the subject matter, so I have to be fed the information (or told what to look for). The work I produce then has to be filtered back to Mr Bossman for his input and/or approval. At this stage, it gets lost in the vortex of his paperwork on his desk. He’s not computer-friendly, so sending it electronically would not solve things.

Well, no point presenting him with a list of my gripes. I need to look at what I can do to make it better, and present him with some suggestions for how we should approach things.

I should try to:

1. Get Mr Bossman to prioritise what I need to do and set out how I will go about doing it.

prioritizing should be easy enough given the spreadsheet we already created how to go about it is the more complicated part – three ways: - find out if there’s an existing version in the system - plagiarise some other institution’s version from the web - get Mr. Bossman or other involved person to outline it to me

2. Set up a system for Mr. Bossman to review what I’ve done so it doesn’t just disappear. For instance:

- bug him with e-mail alerts once a week reminding him what he has that we need to move on  - always print what I give him to review on distinctive paper (green?) so it’s easy to find on his desk - keep it in a distinctive folder for him

3. Ask Mr Bossman to delegate more to me

- would free up more of his time - but I don’t have the knowledge to write what needs to be written most of the time - I might just end up a glorified secretary, taking his dication - which is better than doing nothing – call it ghost writing

4. Try to learn more about the subject matter

- I lack interest, but that’s not the point - a lot of it I will pick up as time goes on – they do keep me informed and aware - I will be sent on training as it arises

 First thing to do: set up meeting with Mr Bossman. This is the hardest part.

------------- So I asked him if I could meet with him, and he said later this afternoon or tomorrow. We'll see if this works or if it ends up like all the other times I tried to get him to sit down and look at what I was doing - i.e. nothing. I can't make it much plainer to him - I'm making no secret of the fact that I'm surfing the web waiting for him to give me some work.  Sigh. Will keep you posted.

Back to the unreal life

Christmas was lovely. Home was lovely. It was great to be back. There were, of course, downsides, like cold Irish houses and vicious hangovers and Dublin prices, but these merely serve to remind one that this is the real world. Not this fictitious always-warm, cheap-because-it’s-the-middle-of-nowhere, temporary life we lead for the other eleven and a half months of the year. Dublin hits you with reality like a gust of rain in the face and punches you in the gut with house prices.

I had a few moments of, anxiety, let’s say, when the whole baby-job-house-future notion started to look like far more than we could chew. The trouble with trying to plan a baby is that once it’s on track you can’t stop halfway through the pregnancy and say, “Let’s just shelve this for now. We can pick it up again later when things have calmed down.” And then, feck, you’re baby-owners in Texas, with all the extra stuff that entails, not to mention the actual infant, moving to who knows where for however long it might be, and will you ever manage to live at home as you keep assuring your family that one day you will?

But I know that life goes on, and people have babies, or don’t, and move to other countries or other states, and live there for a few years or ever, and change their plans and make new ones, and I don’t actually have to have it all set in stone right now.