Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Ready To Jump

Tell me if it's just me. At your job, do you have that one guy that can't do anything right? That just fucks up everything he touches? And he comes in two hours late too many days, putzes around on the Internet half the day and then tries to set forth actual reasons why he can't get his work done ("I'm really getting slammed today. Bad day. I guess I'll have to work late tonight.") And somehow he keeps his job. Do you work with that guy? Are you that guy?

Because if that guy is at every company, I'm not even going to bother looking for another (good) job. I'm just going to look for more music on iTunes to block him out and a good anger-management therapist. There has got to be one company, somewhere in this country, where that guy doesn't work. That guy didn't work at my company until 10 months ago. I was safe. Now that's all crashed down around me. Anybody?

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Where do people go?

I think my grandmother’s had a near-death experience.


She’s been sick on and off for more than a year. She had lung surgery to remove some cancer and has been in and out of the hospital since then. This time last week, a doctor was telling us to make sure her affairs were in order and she was laying in intensive care, tubes coming in and out of too many places to count.


And all of the sudden, she was fine. Yesterday, she talked to me (at me is more accurate) for an hour. But what she said was incredible.


First of all, she didn’t have that sick person, hollow look in her eyes. She was in there again, in her own head. And she told me that she talked to God a lot that week, to her dead brothers and mother. And then she told me everything that she owned that she wanted me to have when she does die. Where her will and last testament are. And that in general that she wants just a little more time with all of us. Even my brother, who she admitted she never got along with as well as the rest of us. But she loves us all, she said between huge, streaky tears.


It was seriously the longest talk I’ve had with her since I got married three years ago. Where do people go sometimes, and how do they come back at the snap of their fingers like that?