I'm BAAAACK!

Well, that was an interesting little hiatus.

I did my last blog, and all of a sudden, lo and behold, my temp agency stopped calling me altogether. This sounds like a complete non sequitur, but isn't - no temp agency equals no money - no money equals no paying of Time Warner bill which equals no TV and...NO COMPUTER! (Unless all I wanted to do was word process and play solitaire.)

So, to bring all my adoring fans up to date (thank you, Tiger Lily - particularly for the picture of the woman I love), you will be delighted to know that in the long dead reaches of these past weeks, I have done absolutely nothing, except be terribly depressed about having no money (and no computer). When I'm depressed I don't do anything. I spend all of my time sleeping and reading, which is restful but fairly useless.

However, last Saturday I got my lovely government incentive check! So I immediately felt MUCH better, and promptly went and paid Time Warner, and bought groceries, and lovely cigarettes, and Diet Coke (yes, I know the ice water I'd been drinking is much better for me, but when one is addicted to Diet Coke, one is addicted). Naturally, I'm now basically out of money again, but I have a house full of groceries and a working computer. Obviously, I'm better off than before.

And one of my favorite men decided to move back to NY from LA and took me out for some food and drinks last Saturday (no, no - just a good friend - one of the Richard III gang). So that was neat. And on Monday, Sarah, Seth, Caesar and I saw the man who makes me drool incessantly - INDIANA JONES! You've got to see it - it's pure Indiana Jones, makes no sense whatsoever, has wild special effects - and features Karen Allen as Indy's love interest again! God bless Spielberg or whomever's idea this was for realizing that a 65 year old man looks creepy as hell having a love interest who's 23. And God bless Karen Allen for being 56 and looking just great and being as feisty as she was in the first movie. Yahoo for all!

And yesterday I actually went out and earned 20 bucks an hour for 9 hours of work. Frankly, I think this job should have paid a LOT more.

This was one of my crazy temp lady's specials. 28 of us arrived at a PR agency on 40th and Madison at 5:00 am on Thursday (yeah, you read that right - 5:00 AM). Our job was to be driven to St. Bartholomew's at 50th and Park and there bounce around until 2 in the afternoon campaigning for Pillsbury's Campaign for a Sweeter America promotion. We were issued T-shirts and campaign signs, and the thing kicked off at 7:30 am with four of us going one by one to the microphone (of whom I was one) exhorting people to vote for our favorite Pillsbury product - cake, frosting, brownies or quick bread. Every fifteen minutes we lined the street shouting for our "favorites" and waving our campaign signs and jumping up and down and generally behaving like people in the throes of some terrible aberration.

Yeah. Every fifteen minutes. We got fifteen minutes on and fifteen minutes off until 2 in the afternoon. The only thing to eat was the Pillsbury products that were being yelled about, the result of which was that the day ended with me having an intense desire to get home and eat an entire shaker's worth of salt - I'm not much of a sweets eater to begin with, and when I DO eat them, I prefer creme brulee to boxed brownie mix. I kept having these vague dreams of popcorn, and Cheese Doodles, and potato chips...these dreams were vague because naturally, with a day like that coming up, my body elected to go into full insomnia mode the previous night. So I was being maniacally enthusiastic on precisely one half hour's doze. You must try that when you have a minute...or nine hours.

And when I finally got home, I drank an entire bottle of Mogen David! No, no, no - I lie. It was Ripple. Actually I came home, had a beer and finally got to the morning papers, and then took a two hour nap because I had to go to a coop meeting. Arrgggh. The ONLY thing of any interest whatsoever at the meeting was that our treasurer inadvertently mispronounced the name of one of our new owners...they're a nice couple named Andrew and Wei-Wei, and he called them Andrew and Wee Wee. Oh, dear.

And when I got home from THAT particularly soporific occasion, I had another beer and some nice kielbasa and sauerkraut (hey - I'm chic - Eastern European food is in these days) and went the hell to bed.

Anyway, since my actually well-paying temp agency has decided they don't want me any more, I guess it's back to the crazy lady...anybody who knows a good temp agency willing to take on a charming, elegant lady of a certain age with secretarial skills who is NOT, however, a word processor, for God's sake let me know. Until then, it's back to stuffing gift bags at the Apollo for Mom, here - but I don't care what the crazy lady says, I'm damned if I'm going to dress as a carrot for eight hours in August.

And in the domestic news, Joshua has decided that the cat box should be in the upstairs bathroom (I think I mentioned this) and that we should use the cheap litter instead of the clumping stuff, and the cats REALLY don't like this. They are showing their displeasure by doing disgusting things all over the place, and Joshua flat out refuses to move the box. Last night after he had gone downstairs, one of the cats decided to shit precisely where he would step directly in it as he came out the new door from downstairs. I almost left it there, just for the hell of it, but I didn't want to listen to him on the subject (or, as we all well know, any other subject). This means, of course, that I will now have to move the box myself and put up with his offended looks...but believe me, it's worth it. Cats do have their own little ways of telling you they're pissed, don't they?

But I'm back!

Love, Wendy