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.