Lost

Every morning, at 3, give or take, those damn ghosties tickle me awake, and I wander through my psyche, dragging my dreams, and my plans, and my mental blue prints
tucked under my arm like a life jacket that I know will save me.

My psyche is a beautiful old house, with tons of doors, and windows, and stairs. So full of brightly colored choices and opportunities, it bubbles over,
and suddenly I know my focus has left the building, perhaps forever.

Visions are always colored in magic marker, because they are bright and permanent.
Idea's are always colored in pastel, so I can change them and blur their edges.
When the magic marker bleeds through the pastels to the idea, it becomes a vision.

I suspect that no one I've ever met really knew shit
mostly because they didn't know enough to know how little they knew
but that didn't deter most, because then they just lowered the curve.

Therefore; I'll not look to others as a benchmark for what direction is mine.
I'll no longer bend to fit their curve and help defend their broken hearts
I'll follow my own corridors, peeking inside each door, until I find my own way home.

This Was Just a Nightmare. Any resemblance to persons dead or living is strickly a coincidence

Earlier this afternoon, I was sitting at my desk up on the hill, eating some chicken noodle soup. Just as I was taking that last coveted bite, my cell phone rang. The ring statled me and I spilled the soup straight down my clevage. While the warmth of the liqued wasn't so bad, I knew it wouldn't last.

It was Joy on the phone, and she had a question.

"Paula, did you feel an imbalance in the force today?"

Feeling the warmth of the soup turning cold, and congeeling in my bra (by the way, a good bra can hold some soup with leaking)Smelling the congeeling chicken soup puddled in my bra, I immediately said "yes" because while I had no idea what Joy was talking about, I knew that some shit somehwhere was out of whack. Then I asked "Why?"

"Paula", Joy said, "Dark Stain was on campus today!"

"Oh, for the love of God, NO, not Dark Stain!" I screamed in shock "Will he never go away?!"

Let me tell you about Mr. Stain. He is an outside contractor that the technical college hired to manage their Information Technology Services department. He arrived through a Blackhole, which was a consulting firm that techno-phobic companies paid through the nose for to have Blackhole staff and manage their ITS area's.

Dark Stain is actually a very handsome man, with good hair, and a beautiful smile. He likes to think of himself as a renaissance man, an intelligent man, a fair man. Unfortunately, due to the pressure's of hanging on to that multi million dollar contract Blackhole has with the technical college, poor Dark Stain is rotting on the inside, which leads to the worst halitosis I've ever smelled.

Now, it could actually be worse. The technical college could not let Blackhole outsource any of the non-managerial technical staff because the techical staff was smart and organized and were protected by the Union. That caused Dark Stain and Blackhole to loose millions of dollars on the contract, and someone was going to pay.

Needless to say, Dark Stain and all his little middle minions despised the Union, and began to spread the horrid rumors about the character and integrity of those who dwelled in the Union. Dark Stain roamed the halls up on the hill, silky and efeminate, whispering poison into the ear of any Governer that would listen.

Soon, Dark Stain had convinced many that the leader of the Union was lazy, dishonest, greedy and evil. And I'm here to tell you, it's really played well in Peoria. At the height of Dark's reign, my office had been moved to a small closet (no, seriously, it was a real closet) with no desk and 45 watt bulbs. Dark said there were not extra desks to be had, and that I should bring in a floor lamp from home.

Finally, after seven or eight years of living under the well manicured but iron hand of Dark Stain, he finally went away. He plagerized "The Last Lecture" filling in the blanks with what he felt really mattered and didn't matter, and that Unions divided us all. He then went on tour, giving his "Last Lecture" to the Board of Trustee's, the President's cabinet, and at an all department ITS staff meeting.

It was the most nauseating, hypocritical document I've ever been forced to listen to. Then, right at the part where Dark was telling us that it was "our families" that really mattered, the unthinkable happened.

MY CELL PHONE RANG!

When I saw it was one of the J's calling, and after hearing Dark Strain drone on about my screwed up priorities, I decided to finally change my ways, and dammit, I got up and left that meeting and took my child's phone call.

After Darks "Last Lecture" finally ended, the new CIO from Blackwell, Spanky Faker, came straight up to me. I felt really excited, because I thought he cared enough to ask if my kids were ok. So I smiled at him and went to shake his hand, and that's when he said,

"You have no class what-so-ever"

In shock, I replied "Is that suit going to help you be a good CIO?"

Oy vay, not a good start, but hey, Dark Stain was finally gone and the people on the hill had rejoiced. Dark Stain had felt sure that he was revered and loved by all, but the sad truth was that he was a joke with no punchline.

So, today, Dark Stain returned. Please, universe, I beg you, for the love of our technical college, make Blackhole and Dark Stain go away. Now that the Queen of Blackwell Ohio is finally off the board of trustee's of the technical college, we could mange our own stuff. Especially because no one has ever been better at technology than we are, and outsourcing your technical management isn't just wildly expensive, it's bad self-esteem.

Trust Me On This...It Could Always Be Worse

One of the reasons I love current events is because it is a never ending source of ammunition for my "things could always be worse" arsenal. And that's a very valuable survival tool, especially if fate has dealt you the hard knock life.

No matter how bad or how stupid any situation gets, I need to be able to think of the counter balance. The thing that, in comparison, pales my travails.

Depending on the size of my discomfort, I can fill in the blank with the appropriately horrible event from any time in history. It gives me a lot to work with, and I find that being morbid doesn't bother me at all.

For instance:

"Damn, traffic sucks, and I'm gonna be late for work and get the stink eye from my manager." (I used to refer to him as my "boss" until I realized that ain't nobody the boss of me.)

It could be worse: "We could be in the wreck that caused the traffic, be dead, and not make it to work at all."

Sometimes, I'm quite virtuous in my rationalizations:

"Oh shit, I left my purse on top of the car and it didn't fall off until I hit 65 on the highway. Too bad I took that 300 dollars out of the ATM in case the electric grid died at the stroke of the new millennium."

It could be worse: "I could be one of the homeless people living under the bridge that will find that cash, and it will be like magic at their darkest moment and change their lives forever."

Other times, I have to reach really, really deep, which generally leads to some really, really ugly stuff.:

"Oh hell no, I did not just break both my feet while on vacation!!"

It could be worse: "I could be living in Cambodia, farming a rice paddie, too poor to even dream of a vacation, step on a land mine, get both my feet blown off, and have no access to prosthetics."

Which reminds me, I love me some foreign country, third world, kind of comparisons:

"WTF, who turned the lights out? Is it getting colder in here? Hey, I thought they didn't cut that shit off in the middle of February anymore."

It could be worse: "If we lived in Siberia, we'd always be cold, and have icicles running down our moustaches like in that movie Dr. Zhivago, and have nothing to eat but nasty shit like left over rotten produce we found in the garbage."

" No, the bank did not just charge me a big fat service charge for the favor of bouncing my mortgage payment because I was 79 cents short?"

It could be worse: "Well, I guess we could be starving to death in Ethiopia."

I find the middle east especially helpful when it comes to women's issue's:

"I'm just as smart as any man I've ever met. So why does he earn so much more money for doing the same job?"

It could be worse: "If I lived in the middle east, they would stone me to death in the courtyard."

My mothers personal favorite is Germany, because it covers so much ground:

You can fill in the blank on this one, no matter the how small or large the hardship.

It could be worse: "We could be living in Nazi Germany, poo-poo-poo."

"Mom, does he have to do the entire service in Hebrew, and hasn't he been talking for like 12,000 hours now? I can't feel my legs anymore."

It could be worse: "Be quiet, you could be in a concentration camp."

In closing, I'd like to share with you my current favorite, which is just plain stupid:

"Oh crap, I'm the same age as Susan Boyle!"

It could be worse: "Well, at least I'm not a virgin."

Go ahead, try me. Tell me anything and I'll tell you how it could be worse. So there you have it.