Jane Fonda? No. CCL.

Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I have a strong disdain for exercise.  The part of me that gets exercised the most is my patience, as I deal with CCL on a daily basis.  CCL, meanwhile, is engaging in her own form of exercise—a nine-week workout program on her Wii.  We’re only into week two.  I’m ready for her to be done.

One of the most common phrases heard out of CCL’s mouth these days is, “If this is what it takes to be skinny…well, fit…than I’d rather remain fat.”  Another frequently heard item is, “I was so exhausted after working out last night that I fell asleep on the couch and didn’t get anything else done for the rest of the night.”  Two things surprise me about this: 1) That she is working out so severely almost every single night that she drives herself to the point of sheer exhaustion & can’t physically continue to function, and 2) that there is room on the couch for her to sleep.

This morning, I heard all about how her place could be on “How Clean is Your House”.  I’ve never seen the show, but I imagine it much to be like “Hoarders”.  I was commenting about how lazy I’ve let myself get with doing things like Windexing the dining room table each night to remove any streaks, since our housekeeper is so fantastic & will get to it without me having to mess with it; CCL commented that she wished she could find her dining room table.  How one loses an entire table is beyond me. 

The conversation about cleaning quickly turned into a conversation about her cats.  (Again, she can twist and turn any random discussion into one that includes her feline friends.)  To get there, she had to mention that her parents “guilted” her into having dinner at their house last night.  Due to CCL’s ability to exaggerate the most mundane of things in a given day—like when someone from our corporate office calls her regarding a simple item, she declares, “Corporate is stalking me.”--I imagine the “guilt trip” conversation to be much like this:  CCLD (that would be CCL’s dad—a rather large man…or so I’ve assumed ever since CCL once told me he sat on a sofa and snapped the frame of it), “Want to come to dinner at our place tonight?” CCL: “Sure.” 

Well, apparently CCL’s mother was miserable and trying to make everyone the same way, but CCL had a good time playing with her parents’ dog.  That topic immediately got her on the path towards a lengthy discussion about her cats.  I say “discussion”, but I mean lecture, as it was very much a one-sided interaction.  I heard something about how Cat A still hates Cat B after two years and how Cat A gets mad when Cat B is sitting next to CCL.  CCL said, “She gives her a look like [at this point, she assumed her whiny cat voice] ‘Why are you sitting next to Mommy?’”  Oh and there was something in there about them now sharing the same plate, upon which CCL mashes their food together.  (Mmmmm…sounds tasty.) 

Meanwhile, her whiny parting sentence (for that encounter anyway; there were four other ones today—including a most unfortunate time when she trapped me in the supply closet & I had no chance to escape) was, “This exercise program is sucking every ounce of energy out of my life.  I thought it was supposed to give me energy.”  My personal bet is that the soda, candy, fattening food and her inability to manage her diabetes may have something to do with this phenomenon that results in her crashing on the couch nightly.

Only seven more weeks of this to go…

The laugh.

Laughter isn’t always the best medicine.  In fact, it can result in anger, rage and—as is the case when I hear CCL’s laugh—the possibility for hate crimes to be committed.  While her laugh itself is obnoxious, that is not what would garner her a beating.  It’s the volume with which it is inflicted upon the rest of us that is awful.

For a frame of reference as to how obnoxious her laugh is: In the Golden Girls episode where Dorothy’s friend comes to visit and reveals that she’s a lesbian & then begins to have a crush on Rose, Dorothy was sharing a bed with Sophia & explaining all of these happenings, when Sophia meets it with a very particular laugh.  It’s more like a broken laugh.  It’s like, “Heh.  heh heh.”  Each chuckle is winded and blunt.  (Though it is funny to hear Sophia do it.)  Take that broken laugh, amplify it, and mix in a ridiculous giggle at the end.  That lovely combination would result in something comparable to the CCL laugh.  Alas, I digress as to the breakdown of the laugh…back to the volume issue.

I blame this need for robust guffawing on the cats.  You see, those cats keep her hostage in her townhouse, limiting her social interactions severely to where she doesn’t understand the concept of quiet laughter.  Instead, she seems to think that practically screaming her laughter makes something more hilarious and that those of us around her will then be curious about the cause for her laugh.  I am never curious.  I am, however, annoyed.  This is a frequent occurrence during conference calls, which makes it all the more bizarre because conference calls over operational procedures are never humorous enough to warrant large amounts of laughter.  Therefore, I am never curious about what she’s laughing at because I know in advance that I won’t think it’s funny.  Instead, it will result in me having to work extra hard to disguise my facial expressions (something that’s a challenge for me—no matter how hard I try), which would give away my thoughts of, “Could you be any crazier?”  Those facial expressions are never fun to give or receive.

Granted, not asking doesn’t always get me out of hearing about these pseudo-humorous moments.  Sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard I try to hide or make myself unavailable, CCL still strikes and has to tell me about the most hilarious thing to ever exist.  Gratefully I’m not alone in these moments—CCL sometimes just feels the need to tell everyone in the office about the hilarity.  So, we all get to hear her go from cube-to-cube, regaling each individual with the exact same verbiage and exact same laughter at the exact same junctures in the story.  And then she starts discussing the cats—yes, the cats.  She takes the opportunity to tie something about changes to, say, job order entry procedures (as an example for how non-hilarious the story matter is each time) into a discussion about how her cats were last night and how naughty they were during morning play time.  (She gets up 45 minutes earlier than needed each morning in order to spend time playing with the cats; she claims that they are unmanageable if they don’t get their play time with her.) 

It is a vicious cycle of assault to the ears…and some days it’s all I’ve got in me to hold back from threatening to throw the cats into a wood chipper.  [Not that I own a wood chipper, nor would I ever abuse an animal, but the threat itself would be enough to inflict harm and make my point…]

Happy __day.

I don’t know as that CCL ever has a happy day…but that doesn’t stop her from saying, “Happy [insert day of the week].”  Every single day.  Repeatedly.  And, as my astute reader, you will notice that the quote was not ended with an exclamation mark.  Because that would require excitement.  Instead, it is said with a more lackluster, dreaded tone that would imply CCL believes with every fiber of her being that this is the last day she will live to see.  And she’s relieved about it, while maintaining her usual anger-ridden attitude.

Recently, CCL has gotten to where she’s renaming days.  Last night before leaving, she said, “See you tomorrow for Wiener Wednesday.”  I didn’t dare ask.

What amazes me is that a phrase (albeit annoying when said on a regular basis) that is intended to be positive and cheerful can leave me in such a foul mood after it comes from CCL’s mouth.  It goes to show that it’s all about delivery.  (And, trust me, as a delivery person, CCL earns no gratuity.  Not one single bit.)

Happy Wiener Wednesday. Or whatever.

Respite concluded.

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.  Such is the case with my time away from CCL.  You see, our office was in dire need of being re-carpeted and repainted, so we each worked from home for the last two weeks of 2010.  It was glorious.  It was, in fact, beyond glorious.  As a downside, I became addicted to “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”; as an upside, I was CCL-free for two whole blessed weeks!!  And then, today, reality came roaring back…like a bad cold sore that is immune to any type of medication, both over-the-counter and prescribed.  Yes, dear friends, the delightful reality I just described is referring to the fact I am now back in the office with CCL.  And it’s bad.

Two weeks is a long time for one to stay in their townhouse with their cats, only socializing occasionally with one’s parents, and naturally this leads to a whole lot of pent up craziness that must be expelled in one afternoon.  At least that’s the case with CCL anyway.  From the moment I walked in the door this morning to this very point in time, CCL has been a non-stop presence in my day.  First, it was a whole conversation about her dad getting a turkey fryer for Christmas that her mom vehemently opposes & will not allow in her house.  Then, it was a conversation about who knows what, as I wasn’t paying attention and just did my obligatory “mmm hmmm” and “yep”.  And that’s when it got even more fun…

About five minutes after leaving my desk, she shouted for me and said she needed my help.  It turns out that her postage printer (which I had ordered from Amazon, thus somehow making me the expert on it) was acting up and sending extra blank postage feeds each time she printed one stamp.  The last time this happened on someone else’s postage printer, we learned to just tear off the blanks & throw them away, since trying to reverse them did more damage…and resulted in my battling the stupid printer with a letter opener for a full hour.  But CCL would have nothing of this—it was waste.  She flat-out said, “I hate throwing things away.”  I said, “I hate throwing away good things; these five wasted stamps, however, are not worth the hour of my time it may take to fix it if the reverse function fails.”  She still went ahead with it, with me fully prepared to hand her a letter opener and walk away, but it did actually work this time.  Yay!  The crappy part in this is that I was having to hover right over CCL for a good five minutes, fidgeting with the stupid machine that would not let me re-assemble it because it clearly is loyal to CCL and wanted to keep me there in her midst so she could be inches from my person for a prolonged period of time.  Stupid machine.

A few minutes after this, as several managers were going through a closet and deciding what to throw away, CCL shouted over her cube wall to the coworker who sits between us & started discussing how she has a hard time throwing junk mail away.  She said that her foyer was filled up with random junk mail, but she spent part of her two weeks at home cleaning her house a little.  She said there was enough junk mail in the foyer to fill up a large garbage bag, which she’s putting in the dumpster tonight.  (It’s a miracle she can even get in her front door—I can only imagine how the rest of the place looks.)  As I may have previously mentioned, I also do not understand why it is that she feels it’s normal to share these types of habits with coworkers, who most likely are never going to think of this as normal behavior.  Alas, I digress.

One thing about CCL is that she has to be RIGHT in the middle of the action—the second it begins.  Whether it’s a short conversation between three coworkers that appears to be a mini-party, or four managers standing in a supply closet looking at mounds of old paperwork and supplies, she has to be right there and practically shouting to be involved in the conversation.  Today, she did not disappoint.

Many years ago (well before I started working in this office), there was apparently an office game of Plinko—complete with a large wooden Plinko wheel that someone clearly spent some time making and painting.  It’s actually pretty impressive.  But, it has names of former employees painted on it and pretty much just needs to get tossed out.  So, once the discussion started between the managers as to whether or not to chuck it, CCL ran over to the area and asked if they were getting rid of it, clearly wanting it for herself.  Why, I do not know.  Why CCL does many things is beyond a mystery to me, but one thing that can be counted on is her ability to detect when garbage is being tossed, followed by her asking to keep it for herself.  My bet: she’d say her cats would have a fun time playing with it.  That’s the same reason she wanted old plastic file boxes, floppy disk—as in the HUGE, old ones—storage containers, a dozen of the branded cup cozies and so many other random things I can’t even begin to describe.  In short, her hoarding is enabled each time we clean out a supply closet.  (She was particularly angry with her boss, Cow, for taking two hula hoops for her granddaughters when CCL wanted them for her cats.)

Each time today that any of this has happened, it’s put her directly next to my desk, so she has to stop by and visit.  She just stopped by a few minutes ago to show me all of the scratches on her arms—she looks like the cats won the fight.  It’s pretty bad.  So, she said, “Tonight is manicure night for the girls.”  Because I refer to my two dogs as “the girls”, she has started referring to her two cats the same.  I somewhat feel bad that my behavior has led to her humanizing her two psychotic cats even further. 

In short, I am ready for this day to be over.  And I hate to say that since it’s one of CCL’s most commonly uttered phrases.  Quoth I: “[big sigh] I am so ready for this day to be over.”  I think she’s said it two or three times so far today.  Only about a half-a-dozen more times to go and the day should be complete… Oy vey.