Monday, February 7, 2011

Monday, Meet Manic. Manic, Say Hello to Monday.

Seriously. Who wears pajamas to work?
No, lingerie models don’t count.
Anyone that knows me knows that having to wear business casual to work Monday thru Thursday isn’t my idea of a good time. Forget about wearing a suit every day. Just thinking about it gives me an anxiety attack. I’m a jeans and a t-shirt kind of guy, so I totally understand wanting to be comfortable. But pajamas? And it’s corporate approved? Seems a bit much if you ask me.
Granted, it’s not our office wearing said PJ’s to work, but I still had to witness this carnival sideshow every time I ventured into the communal areas when the need to refill on water or the urge to empty the tank struck.
Think I’m overreacting? Try walking into the men’s restroom only to discover the reincarnation of Andre the flippin’ Giant standing there, hand against the wall in front of him for support, urinal-blocking you...bathrobe spread wide open with the tie thingy dragging the ground. Apparently the fates felt that seeing Joan Rivers dressed as a GoDaddy girl last night on TV didn’t scar my psyche enough.
Rather than doing an awkward about-face and hightailing it to a different restroom, I did what any self-respecting man in my position would do: I hid from Andre in the darkness of the lone remaining depository, which was located next to him and conveniently shared a burnt out light bulb.
He flushed (points for that), and as he turned to leave our eyes made contact in a way that one dude should never have to make eye contact with another.
“Morning,” Andre said, gazing at me long enough that he should have offered a cigarette and a cuddle.
I said nothing. I didn’t feel the least bit rude about it either. I mean, you wanna chat me up, do it in the hallway. Don’t try and peek over my privacy fence because you’re curious to see what kind of irrigation system I’m rockin’.
On the way back to my cubicle, I found myself trying to purge my mind of everything that was already starting to bog it down at 7:43 in the morning. That’s when it hit me: Just go home. Go back to bed. Pretend like the day never began. Try again tomorrow.
Instead I wrote down the top five things that came to mind and seemed to be holding me back as I tried to start my day. This is what I came up with. More or less.
1)      Too many emails waiting to be answered – all of which seem to be more important than the next. After four unexpected days off of work, perhaps it’s best to just find a new job rather than even try to make magic happen in a land where fairytales don’t exist. Or hit the delete button. Yeah, that’s probably easier.
2)      I can’t believe I finally gave into my curiosity and wasted fifteen minutes of my life on “Jersey Shore” yesterday. I’d have been better off watching Gigli over and over again on a continuous loop.
3)      Did I really only bring a strawberry yogurt and chicken-noodle soup to eat today? If I keep this up I’ll fit into that polka-dot bikini by Spring Break for sure…
4)      Send GoDaddy.com a thank you card for burning the horrible, horrible image of Joan Rivers in my mind. Gag. Me. Spoon optional. And no, Joan, we cannot talk.
5)      I totally get having an off-day at work. I have them all the time, actually. But when your only job as a Grammy-winning artist is to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, please get the words right. A lot of men and women have fought for and given their lives for your right to bastardize the song with your “soulful” rendition. You want to take a song and make it your own? Try out for “American Idol.”
Perhaps I was suffering from the side effects of too much cold and flu medication over the weekend. Maybe cabin fever had taken total control of my sanity since I’d been trapped inside the confines of our apartment for six out of the last seven days thanks to the ice and snow storm that hit Dallas last week. That much “quality time” with the wife and kids is enough to drive any sane man mad, and my degree of sanity was already questionable to begin with.
Because things are never as nice and neat as we’d like to pretend they are, my list of top five had six notes of random thought on it today. Fitting for a Monday wrapped in chaos.
6)      Time to buy a house.
That may just be the most grown-up thought I have all year.