This is covering Wednesday the 19th.

We had the office party today. It was pretty quiet for us. The stealing game was pretty tame this year (a lot of mugs) and not that many people do the game any more. Probably the most memorable bit was the BigBoss ending up with a pig candy pooper and then trying to figure out how to get it to work, leading to the quote “While BigBoss is figuring out how to make her pig poop....”

I bought LED candles with a remote control (didn’t buy anything weird like usual, sigh). A few days after I bought that, a coworker told me that her LED candles had been stored in the attic and they had kind of melted up there. So I was hoping she’d get the candles...and she did!....and then my assistant stole them from her. Oy!

I am now in business processing meetings for both my old unit and my new unit all the time now. The new unit has to have all of their meetings at 8 a.m., for two hours at a time. in a room we literally call “the icebox” and people are running two portable heaters in. And I can’t stand coffee. I also don’t really know what the hell is going on with their business stuff since I either haven’t done it at all or haven’t done it in two years. So mostly I am just sitting there desperately wanting to fidget (NOT ALLOWED) or DO SOMETHING (also not allowed), with nothing to contribute and staring into space, thinking “Huh?” a lot. There is a lot of drama going on over there that I am lost about.

I yawned twice. I certainly wasn’t expecting to yawn twice, but it happened. And then after the meeting I got told very politely for 20 minutes that (a) I should hopefully not be yawning at all because someone might be offended that I think their presentation is boring and I should make people have a good impression of me, and (b) should I yawn, I should cover it up and apologize profusely and say I haven’t had my coffee yet (note: she knows I don’t like or drink it).

This was odd. She was super nice about it, but it was odd.

I knew she didn’t like yawning, mind you, but so sue me, it has been a while and that did not occur to me at 9 a.m. when the yawns came upon me. Also, she knows I end up waking up at like 5 a.m. every day and that is why the yawning. The subject matter was not super scintillating, more like very complicated. It was more along the lines of “I’m not offended because I know you but your new coworker might be,” and also then turned into some interesting discussion about how she is tall and the issues other people have had with it, like say, men not being used to being looked in the eyes by women and being freaked out about it. And the situation her tall son is in with having a very short male teacher--she tells him not to talk to the guy while standing up at all. Knowing the joys of certain short men who aren’t secure in their masculinity, I was all “omg” myself hearing this.

This has given me some interesting thoughtfood to chew on, actually. You know, the issues we have in our past that give us complexes about things, thinking of what shit she has probably had to deal with to have her be so ah, on alert about this sort of of thing, vs. say, the shit I have been having to put up with in the Shark Tank. I don’t have paranoia about whether or not they’ll like me because that ship has sunk, but I do have to have constant paranoia about whether or not they hear me or remember that I exist. Which is a joy. I don’t like having to live under constant “watch yourself because someone might object,” and lord knows that while I’m escaping it coming from the old group, now it’ll be so much more judgment from everyone.

I also tend to believe in earning one’s reputation a bit. I know I don’t come off well at first to some people--I’ve been hated at first sight a LOT just for having glasses/being a weirdo. That’s just sitting still and existing level of bringing on hatred. (Hence why I felt rather betrayed by the Shark Tank, because those people decided after a few months they hated me, and usually it’s either “hate on sight” or everything’s all good with me.) And that’s even before I do anything like wear something weird or knit in public. But I’m fine with say, people testing to make sure I paid attention while knitting--that’s fine! I earn my reputation. And I’ve known a few folks at work that outright intimidated me at first and then turned out to have hearts of gold when you got to know them. So, you know what? Get to know folks and then make your assessments. I seem to recall there’s a very famous book by Jane Austen that has been made into six billion movies and book sequels that covers this territory...

Also, sometimes folks yawn. Or get up to go to the bathroom. Or leave the show early. Shit happens. It’s not necessarily about or a reflection on you.

Sigh.

As for the Shark Tank, I bid goodbye to it tomorrow. I was going to try to totally move my shit after work so as not to offend anyone with the noise of my existence, but since the people in the new office all leave and lock their office at 5, that was not doable. So I packed up the stuff I was taking home after the sharks left and put the things I will no longer have any storage space for in boxes. I’m pretty much just going to pick things up and move them down the hall tomorrow, and after that they can all do a little “Ding dong, the bitch is dead!” dance about me.

As I looked around the office, I thought, “You know, I could actually do something around here that they wouldn’t like but would never know about.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

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