Girl Anachronicles

I started working at my new place on Monday. I was handed my laptop just yesterday, though. Seems like they weren’t exactly 100% ready for me.

The hours are weird, it will take some getting used to. I’ve been working at offices for about 7 or 8 years now. My punch-in time has always been 8am or earlier. In most places I’ve been, it has been completely mandatory that I be there on time, down to the last company I worked for, in which 8:01am was one minute too late. In here, we work from 9am to 6pm, and it’s almost like a suggestion. I’ve seen people come in at 10am or even 11am, and it’s not a big deal. However, punch-out time is 6pm, and I don’t see people leave much earlier than that. That will be the hardest thing to get used to, but it’ll be alright.

The office is freakishly small, like a doctor’s office. Right now, I’m sitting in the conference room, which also doubles as docking bay for the technicians (since techs don’t get their own cubicles … the office is freakishly small). This office is in a building that was apparently made for doctors’ offices and clinics, and the footsteps of the people passing by in the hall make the floor tremble. It thunders through this space like it was made of construction paper. Other than that, the silence is a bit unnerving. These people are so different from one another, yet they all seem to convene on one thing: they like their peace and quiet.

These days have been odd, obviously. Being the new girl, not having the slightest clue of what to do, other than reading and re-reading the manual for the software I will be working with… and then again, sometimes getting the feeling of comfort that these people will most likely consider me family with astounding speed (since not only the office is freakishly small, but the staff is also not very big). I like it here, but I’m trying not to get too comfortable. My job’s gonna be on the outside, at the client, and that’s usually never a comfort zone. That’s the reason I chose this: to get out from behind the desk and do something different… wake my mind up a bit.

So, on Tuesday we’ll be on our way to San Diego (plane leaves at 4:52pm!), and after our return it will be work work work! I have a good feeling about this, though. I can do this, it should be good.

Different. But good.

Today it feels much more official, today is the first day of the last week, today is the beginning of a long good-bye.

It was a nice “romance” while it lasted, and just the same, it’s always a bittersweet deal when it’s over.

Promises of Eternity

by The Magnetic Fields

What if the show couldn’t go on
What if we all got jobs and got to bed before dawn
What if Old Joe had to retire
What if all the stage hands were let go or fired
That’s just like what the world would be
If you fell out of love with me

I can’t let this happen to you
Don’t you let it happen to me
What would our friends and family say
If they could only see
If you let this happen to us
Don’t think you’d be setting me free
Wasn’t it you and I who made
Promises of eternity

What if the lights didn’t go on
What if the velvet curtain had to be taken down
What if the clowns couldn’t be clowns
And all those painted smiles gave in to plaintive frowns
What if no show ever happened again
No Seven, no 8 1/2, no Nine, and no “10″
All numbers and no mystery
No promise of eternity…

As I was exiting the gas station’s mini-market (one of the few breakfast havens I have adopted in the past few weeks), I crossed a young girl (probably college-aged) attired so: head covered in mini-braids held back in a loose, low ponytail, huge, shiny sunshades, light-colored shorts, non-fashion (that means “practical”) tennis shoes with thick socks, and a baggy, green T-shirt with a cheap logo across the front that read “Entretenimiento de Verano” (Summer Entertainment) or some crap like that. It took me 2 seconds to realize this girl must work at a summer camp. What drove the idea home was the blow whistle slung around her neck. And then I remembered, I truly remembered my summer of 1997.

I was 19, in college, studying commerce, most likely still debating myself between a career in accounting and a career in information systems. I didn’t have a steady job, never quite needed it since I always fully qualified for a federal scholarship, but summer was always the weak link in that way of life: no scholarship meant no funding, no fun, no plans, no nothing. Summer was “the time to get a job” by excellence. The previous summer (1996) I had had my brief stint in a “healthy junk food” joint, lasted two months, had a miserable time (specially at the later hours of the afternoon, when kids my age would come into the establishment all sun-kissed, trailing salt and sand with their worn flip-flops – that was the year I met the bottled tan firsthand… never again!).

So, in 1997 I was ready for a breath of fresher air, and I let myself be led by a friend to apply for a job at a summer camp. I had never had any experience doing anything remotely similar to this, with the exception of babysitting my sister, and even that always brought skin-creeping memories. But I didn’t think it through: I handed over a filled application and got a call a few weeks later. We had to go through a screening process, which meant that we had to prove that we would be good camp counselors and leaders, that we would be able to keep control of a 20+ group of [rich, stuck up] kids. Incredibly enough, I (who have never considered myself to be a natural leader of any sort) got picked for the job, as well as my friend and many others. It was to be 4 camp leaders to a group. I got chosen as part of the leader team for a group of 30 5-year-old girls. Thirty Daddy jewels. Thirty princesses whose parents would keep an eagle eye on us at all moments possible.

It was an amazing experience, though as harrowing as it would seem. I realized that I had it in me to care for other people’s children. The girls grew onto me, we got close like family. A whole month of spending more than 8 hours a day with a child will automatically turn you into a secondary parent. Tending to their every needs, having to take it easy when at least 15 of them decide to scream at the same time for something they want, curing boo-boo’s, identifying lice …. even identifying what they cannot say, as it happened once with another group’s 2-year-old boy: he was crying and the girl in charge was to the end of her rope, she didn’t get it. The little boy could not express that the heat outside was smoldering to him. I held some icy water to his face and he immediately calmed down and went into a deep sleep. I gained a fan for the rest of the day!

That summer was one of the most active I ever had: I got a natural suntan by just playing in the sun with the children almost daily. I was starting to date a total idiot who was however highly social, so the outings were frequent, and sometimes even fun. I was fully immersed in social activities and pop culture. I became one of the clan. I think this was the summer that had me assimilated into the commerce student culture. I had begun the month’s worth of work with the idea that the $700 I got as payment would be used to get my first tattoo. By month’s end, I had dropped the idea. It would be 4 years later that I would get my first tattoo. By then, the sun-kissed, carefree, sociable Diana would be gone in favor of someone much closer to her own roots.

Summer is a time in which no one is quite content: unless you have copious amounts of money, you either stay at home and be bored to tears by the repetitive, mind-numbing TV programming, or you get a job that will keep you from having all the fun you intended to have with the money you earned. That’s the way it is for most college kids, unless they signed on for summer classes, in which case the misery is doubled because you have no time to earn money nor do you have time to chill out, and it will be something you will have to do also as soon as summer is over, so it annuls summer altogether.

I envied the ones that went abroad, though. But that took money, regardless of whether it was for studying or pleasure.

As a working adult, however, summer takes other undertones. Summer ceases to exist as “the free time you get between semesters”. It becomes “a time which I may get free as well as I may not”, and what you get is one or two weeks in which you try to cram as much enjoyment as you can, leaving you so exhausted that you need a vacation from your vacations. It’s even more absurd.

That summer in 1997 was the last one in which I held a college-type job. After that, summers became a blur. I never got as sun-kissed again, nor as sociable. Truth be told, I don’t miss it, however much I hold that memory in my heart. But it helped me recognize when people are having the same miserable fun at summer camp.

Hay cierta calidad de surrealismo en el hecho de que el camino hacia mi oficina está pavimentado con partes putrefactas de animales. La nueva dirección física para llegar a mi oficina es “en la #1, en la pata de vaca, a la izquierda”. Un aroma orgánico del proceso de descomposición en su plenitud es lo que le da ambiente al estacionamiento frente a este edificio. Me cuentan mis compañeros que viajan hacia más allá sobre la #1 que “más abajo hay una cabeza”.

No quiero imaginarme si en lugar de estar rodeados de partes de vaca, fueran partes humanas: sería una imagen de pesadillas. Hace dos días llegué tarde a mi trabajo por lo que provocó esta situación: en la madrugada entre el martes 8 y el miércoles 9 de mayo, un camionero (probablemente medio dormido o naturalmente despistado, como yo) se fue por toda la #1 con su cargamento de desperdicios animales, y aparentemente quiso compartir de su riqueza y permitió que la portezuela de atrás se abriera, así repartiendo cabezas, patas, estómagos, orejas, tripas (y su usual contenido), etc por todo el pavimento.

Claro, sabiendo que la Ley de Murphy la tiene agarrada conmigo, estas cosas pasan en la temporada en que tengo el aire acondicionado del carro jodido (y en pleno inicio de verano, para acabar de joder!). Cuando pasé por ahi el primer día, lo q predominaba era un olor q supe reconocer aunq rara vez pasa por mi nariz: el olor a muerte, a sangre animal, a masacre. No era descomposición, eso vino luego, por la tarde, al día siguiente. El primer día era olor a recién muerto … y a mierda, obviamente, confirmado por la tripamenta aplastada (y vaciada a punta de tráfico pasándole por encima) un poco antes de la luz al lado de mi trabajo. Ese olor se me quedó pegado en la nariz el resto de la mañana.

Ya hoy la peste no es tanta, pero la pata de vaca sigue ahi. Me pregunto si los gusanos ya la habrán agarrado, si dispondrán de la piel (y el pelaje), dejando la figura al hueso … o si el sol estará disecando esa pieza solitaria poco a poco, para dejarla como marcador semi-permanente de la dirección física de mi trabajo.

La vaca era marrón.

UPDATE (13:05PM): Ya retiraron la pata de vaca de la carretera. Ya no hay pata de vaca para que la gente llegue aqui. So many lost people…