STET?

Apologies for the last week, Corporate America has been digesting my entire body. And it hasn't been pretty. I started my new job at a hot ad agency downtown on Monday. Don't worry, it's a family business...I didn't seek out CA (not to be confused with California which I would seek out just as fast as the former). I have been busy working 10 hour days and using words like "proofs" and "vendors" and sometimes phrases like "Yeah, I'll be sure to talk to the art director about that edit on the pdf to make sure it gets back into production today.".

I know. I know. I wore sexy boots and put my lunch in the department fridge. I made eyes with a boy at the copy machine and complain when other people don't make new coffee. And some of these people actually buy it!

Maybe I should consider a career in theater.

1: "Dog. Doooog. Doggggg. Dogdogdog. DOG!"

A midweek vacation to the lake leads to the best kind of confusion wherein you think Friday is Sunday. This is followed by extreme exhaustion from going on the schedule of five kidlets, ages 9, 7, 6, 4, and 1.

Pictured here are 6 (cousin, eyelashes) and 7 (goddaughter, niece, resident sassfest).
Other notables were 4 (aka: Romanian orphan), who I interacted with for 20 minutes regarding her Barbie makeup kit before she uttered one word. When we all sat down for breakfast on Thursday morning. 4 went for two breakfast sausage links:

Sister: "Lauren, why don't you try one and make sure you like it before you take a second."

4: (bites into sausage, tucks chin into shoulder ala Sandwich Lady and whispers under her breath with 10 toothed grin) "Yesssssss." (grabs second sausage)

Totcke.

Why are we conditioned to shout to recorded voices? When you call any customer sales representative you will, at some point, be directed to a voice recording. My parents' generation is particularly bad about shouting in general, (see also: foreign countries, languages) but voice recordings might be the worst especially on a cell* phone. Probably because they go on the principal that if they cannot properly hear to person on the other line, they should shout louder because this is clearly a reflection of volume and not reception.

My mother on the phone with eBay:

"CAN. NOT. LOG. IN."
[pause]
"YES."
[pause]
"OKAY."
[pause, representative in Thailand picks up]
It should be noted that after conversing with a machine, speaking to a breathing human is sometimes worse.
"C? No. Not C. Not cat. It's Z. Forget cat! It's zebra!! ZEBRA."
[pause]
"Okay, Vanessa. I don't know what to tell you. I need help, and you're the helper. We need to figure something out. Together."

*My mother sometimes calls this her 'car' phone. Yessss.

Too soon, and would violate my goal to never take a chemistry course ever

"I don't know what I'm going to do with my life."
"You should be a writer."
"Meh. I still need a major. If I were going to be a writer I could never major in English. I'd need to major in something really funny."
"Nursing?"
"No man, too close to home."