The Severance of Ties- Mid-Life Crisis Part IV

I love the word euphemism because it's so close to euthanasia in both spelling and sound. Frankly, I don't think the comparison ends there. Euthanasia is defined as, "the act or practice of allowing a hopelessly sick or injured patient to die by taking less than complete medical measures to prolong life called also mercy killing".

A euphemism is defined as "the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt". So both involve an element of "mercy" or "benevolence". Perhaps a euphemism could be considered a sort of merciful use of words. This brings us to part IV of my mid-life crisis.

The evil firm has notified us employees that there will be a RIF or REDUCTION IN FORCE. This of course is code for, "you'll be standing in the unemployment line shortly because the shareholders need new $3000 chairs". As an HR professional this is particularly painful and awkward. You are expected to as our great leader told us on a recent conference call "(not act a fool) behave as the HR professionals we know you are, while assisting other (disposable worker bees) administrative staff as (we can their @sses)they TRANSITION out of the firm-- all the while (smiling as you twist the knife of hypocrisy in their back) illustrating the core values of the firm and treating the (poor saps we just fired) OUTGOING staff with (fake kindness)dignity and respect. Then and only then will we address the need to (fire your @sses as well) STREAMLINE the functionality of the human resources department....

Uh sure. Okay. To make matters worse, although the powers that be know who is leaving they will not tell us. It is apparently, much better to let this drag out. Frantically, my co-workers try to piece together the inner working of this CIA level covert operation. Employee X just had a title change the week the RIF was announced. He must be staying. A job just got posted on our careers page which basically encompasses 70% of my job. I must be going. They didn't have employee B working on any major projects this quarter...she is so going. You know employee A is staying because she is always in the great leader's office bobbing for apples... blah blah blah....

Po_Lil_Richboi could really give a good damn when it comes right down to it. Truth be told, I would be more depressed if they kept me around to stand guard at the border after the fall of ROME. I don't really want to care for their wounded after having to bury the dead. I am ready for a severance (package) of ties.

The Clarity of Urine- Mid-Life Crisis Part III

Some have accused me of being a hypochondriac. Personally, I like to think of myself as "significantly in tune with my body". During a doctor's visit years ago, a nurse once scoffed, "Well, there certainly seems to be a psychological component to your illness!" Nobody asked you heifer! Shouldn't you be taking by blood pressure, or handing me an ugly buttless nightgown?

The time has come for me to be "significantly in tune again". Recently, I have not felt quite right. I will spare all of you the details, but the end result is that doctor had me peeing in to a bag for 24 hours. Lovely. "Drink lots of water", he said. "You want to pee clear". He repeated the last part loudly and emphatically, "Peeee CLEAR!" Apparently, whatever is wrong is effecting my urine and my hearing.

When you have to spend the weekend close to home, engaged in this fun filled activity, you have some time to think or... surf the net and get freaked out about every little thing related to your kidneys. My doctor had informed me that I had high levels of protein in my urine and wanted to check things out. He said he wanted to determine how to stop whatever was happening and prevent it from getting worse, IF POSSIBLE!... Couldn't he have left the "...IF POSSIBLE" out of it? It's not exactly comforting.

Your kidneys do everything from regulate your blood pressure to filter toxins in the body. They are slightly more important than say, your appendix. Every site I visited for information basically ended with "having extremely high levels of protein in urine often signifies renal failure". Then they proceed to tell you how many people die each year from renal failure. Lovely. But, I'm drinking 3 qts of water a day, I'm peeeeing CLEAR now, doesn't that account for something?

According to a co-worker of mine, it could account for me throwing off my electrolytes, going temporarily insane, and drowning myself internally! Great, so if I don't die of renal failure, I might drown myself, but be too whacked to know it's happening. Grrrreat!

Bringing some much needed reason to the situation was a specialist in the nephrology department. After reviewing my charts, he did what all specialist do-- he ordered a battery of more test. However, he also gave me some perspective...

The levels of protein along with all my other stats being normal suggests a possible infection or virus that has more than likely come and gone. Only the tests will tell. 3 quarts of water for someone my size, is not going to throw off my electrolytes and drown me. Someone my size? Is he saying I'm getting fat?!

Next time I will write about the severance of ties!

Kids, My Daddy Clock Is On Fire but its broken!!!- Mid-Life Crisis Part II

So as I often eventually do, I have slacked off on my blog entries. And as usual I have a pretty good excuse. It seems my mid-life crisis has arrived and is in full throttle! Yay, how fun for me!

My 35th birthday came and went with very little fanfare, for which I was extremely grateful. MPP and I jotted on down to our favorite neighborhood restaurant, BayWolf. Yummy goodness in the way of a mind blowing Shiraz, an excellent dinner and dessert. No, I can't remember the particulars of the dinner (didn't I mention mind blowing Shiraz). I can tell you chicken and potatoes were involved somehow.

Anyway, I was on the wine so confessions were somehow involved as well. You know my sorted past, which is ever present. I have been thinking a lot lately about how those experiences have shaped who I am now and have had a role in the direction my life has gone. For better or for worse we are married to ourselves in this way.

Now that I am half way to Forty, yes 4-0, I have become conscious of the tick tock of a clock I never purchased. No offense ladies, but I thought only women had to be concerned with the biological clock. If this is true, I don't understand why my gaze lingers longer than it should on a father and son. I was on the train yesterday standing along side a man and his baby girl. She sat there asleep in her stroller as he stared contently upon her. I smiled enviously at them only to be jarred out of my reverie by a very different parent/child moment.

Apparently, there was a three year old boy on board who had learned the art of saying "no". While his mother had not been paying attention, he had pulled something sparkly from his mother's tote bag. As she attempted to retrieve it, the young child held the item closer with one hand and extended the other hand to smack his mother square in the face. Her glasses tilted in a lopsided fashion. "No!", he exclaimed, "No, no, no, nooooo!" His shrieking turned the attention of many passengers to them, as the mother grew small in her seat!

I looked away embarrassed for her. My overly empathetic mind had thrown me in to the woman's shoes. Who wants to go through that power struggle everyday? How is it worth it? Would I cower in my seat? Run from the train screaming; abandoning my child? I would like to think I would be as sturdy and forthright as my own parents. But how can I be sure? Is it fair to use another human life as some experiment on whether or not you could grow it in to its adult form without installing a barrage of neurosis, psychosis and/or other maladaptive behaviors? My face became warm and flushed. As the train came to the Rockridge stop, I leapt from it as if I had been in captivity. I took in the fresh air and ran down the escalator without a glance backwards.

As I waited for MPP, I noticed a couple walking towards me with two children. One of the children was on the father's shoulders and playfully covering the father's eyes. They were all laughing. All except for the infant, who was passed out like a drunkard in the stroller. I smiled to myself again. What the !$@## is wrong with me? I'll tell you what's wrong kids, my Daddy Clock is on Fire, but it's broken! Who do you call to fix that? Next time I'll inappropriately disclose about my potentially malfunctioning organ. Get your minds outta there. This isn't that kind of blog!

What Would Oprah Do? Mid-Life Crisis Part I

So my co-worker is on vacation again and I am left tending to the salt mines alone. Double duty, single pay. I have found myself staring in to the abyss of paperwork and asking myself, "What is it all for?"

I should have been working I know, but instead I was web surfing. It was the best way to remain in denial about the 86 unread emails in my outbox. I really should get to them, I thought...click click click s-c-r-o-l-l. Politics, Middle East, CODE RED, Iraqi violence still rising. Poor Paris Hilton, what's a girl to do-- 45 days without Aveda and Shisedo?

Like Paris, this po-lil-richboi is in a prison of his own. I may have not been picked up for a DUI,and some starving New York Artist may not have sculpted a replica of me dead with my innards showing, but I have some sh!t going on.

As I approach the other side of my 30s (eeek!)this year I have to stop and wonder. Am I making a difference? Does anyone know I am here? If I got hit by a missile or killed by a cylon before BattleStar Galactica gets canceled, would anyone notice?

I am the grandson of a Baptist minister, a missionary of sorts. I was raised with a strong sense of myself and my place in the community. My early work days were spent in homeless shelters and youth homes. Where am I now? A law firm- schucking and jiving for the man- or rather processing his benefits in the HR dept. What's the dif? As I stand here at the crossroad of what can only be my upcoming mid-life crisis, I have to ask myself, "What would Oprah do?"

I remember seeing an interview with her once, where she stated that she always knew she was destine to do great things. Well I felt the same way growing up Oprie girl. Where's my talk show? Where's my book club? So all the little pamphlets and brochures are coming to the house now. Colleges promising me bright bold new futures. Yes, mid-life crisis indeed. But then again what if it isn't? What if it is the old cliche? You know: The first day of the beginning of the rest of my life...

Click click s-c-r-o-l-l. Urgent work e-mail. Yes, of course. No problem. I can stay late...

Next time instead of the click, I'll talk about the Tick... tick tock of the male biological clock.

That Which Does Not Kill

It seems that nowadays news stories only succeed in pissing me off. Remember in the early to mid 90's there was all this talk of prostate cancer? I can't remember which celebrity got it, but one of them did and suddenly it was a National Health Crisis-- all because Johnny Hollywood had it.

We ignored the fact that The American Cancer Society estimated that there would be about 218,890 new cases of prostate cancer in the United States in 2007. Or that About 27,050 men would die of this disease. It was Johnny Hollywood that got our attention.

At that time, we were told that Vitamin E could help and that this particular cancer might be the result of a vitamin D deficiency. Silently frightened men (that's the only way we are allowed to be scared)tip toed in hoardes to the nearest pharmacies. Especially those over forty.

Articles spouting the miracles of Saw Palmetto and cranberry pills were in every newspaper. Oprah had a Mens Health Guru on her show, "Vitamins!, Vitamins!"

Now here we are actually in 2007 and what do I find? Article after article concerning a study just out of the gate on prostate cancer. What does it say you ask? Oh, my bretheren let me drop it upon your eyes: Taking too many vitamins may increase men's risk of dying from prostate cancer.

Wha-huh? Whut happened? I encourage you to to click and read!.

To make the results of the recent study even more confusing, they found no link between multivitamin use and the early stages of prostate cancer.

Wha-huh? WHUT HAPPENED?!

I don't know. I do know that I am hard pressed to find anything these days that will not kill you under the right circumstances. Cigarettes, alcohol, crystal meth, unsafe sex? No, let's not be too obvious. Centrum One A Day or Ginkgo that's the real risky stuff, apparently. So stop main-lining that Vitamin B complex. That stuff is brutal!

By the way, make sure you wash those supermarket greens thoroughly. And if you're trying out a new dog food for your beloved pup, better feed it to the neighbor's cat (you know the one that keeps crapping in your yard, not the cute one) first to see if it takes!

Let me be lucid in my rantings for a moment. I am not promoting hysteria. I simply mean to suggest that we take these studies with a grain of salt, because next year they will discover something else or reinterpret already existng data differently.

So I guess we have to muddle through the information, weigh our options and find a damn good doctor we trust. The rest is up to the Universe, because that which does not kill you only serves to do so... eventually....maybe, but possibly not.

Gettin' Jiggly With It!

I was running upstairs at work yesterday, and I became conscious of something incredibly disturbing. A bean pole from way back, I am used to my body being packed in to itself pretty tightly. I have always been able to eat what I want, when I want and damn the consequences (basically because there were none).

Apparently, as I flew up the stairs in my "Jack Be Nimble" fashion, gravity was having a bit of a time keeping up with me. I felt my chest not only bounce, but jiggle! I know, I know TMI-- But I think it only fair to share for some of you guys and dolls are a tad younger than me. I simply want to prepare you for when everything starts to wander South.

It all started a couple years back, when I bought myself a cute shirt from a vintage store. Foolish child bought not a small... but XS! Can you believe that sh!t. A poor delusional lil rich boi was just asking to get his feelings hurt. Hurt they were too, as I sucked and contorted to get in to the shirt. Oh, I got in to that biotch, kids. All of me, including my friends-- "The Rolls" if you catch my drift. Mr. Roll was on my right and Mrs. Roll was on the left, next to her love.

So now, I am left contemplating how comfortable I want to make my self with all of this. I mean The Rolls are one thing, but I'm just not down with getting jiggly with it!

I, Bitch!

At the request of a friend I am included an old vignette from a previou site. It is entitled, "I, Bitch!"

It's 7:25 a.m. Riding up the escalator at the train station, I am blurry eyed and dazed. In my pre-chai latte psychosis I see what the others do not-- that we worker bees look very much like candy on a conveyor belt.

We are dark chocolate. We are white. I think I see a couple of caramels. A few of us seem a little too damned nutty for my taste. Some of us are sweet or semi-sweet, while others are just plain unadulterated bitter. As we ascend this "conveyor belt like" escalator it hits me. The same fate awaits us as the proverbial Hershey bar. Once we enter the world, we will be inevitably eaten.

I contemplate these thoughts as I am stuck on the left side of the escalator in grid locked people traffic. Doesn't the man reading his New York Times a few steps ahead of me recognize that several people behind him have far more important destinations than his own?

He has failed to learn escalator etiquette: stand to the right/walk on the left.

I, Bitch educate him by singing in my most melodic of tones, "Right side for standing, Left side for moving. Come one people, let's go!"

During the course of my day with in my designated cubicle, I smile cheerfully and accommodate the tin can headed executives with less education and general common sense than my self.

I, Bitch understand that my station in life is my own doing. You see, I have not networked enough and simply do not know the right people.

When yet another copy machine catastrophe strikes my boss before his 11:00 a.m. presentation-- I, Bitch resist the urge to co-dependently rush in and save him. Instead, I preserve my own sanity by taking an early lunch.

Once the atrocities of my work day are done, I make it through the public transportation stench of stale air and uncaring people.

I, Bitch arrive to the sanctity of my dwelling just in time for my gourmet cooking show and the discovery that dishware does not clean itself.

Carefully, yes with quite careful precision I place the filthy plates (still host to week old lasagna remnants) in to a simple brown bag and leave said bag on my roommates' bed. This is altruism at work, as I am concerned that she has forgotten the dishes belong to her. Surely she will appreciate my attempts to bring her to the waters of mutual respect (hoping she will drink).

Upon her arrival home, she discovers the dishes and proceeds to screech that I am not fit to inhabit a living space with another human being. I agree with this in part, and assert that it is she I can not live with, not other human beings.

I, Bitch try my hand at being helpful by leaving packing boxes, duct tape and bubble wrap just outside her door. I am even thoughtful enough to include a change of address form.

Later that evening I, Bitch propel my upstairs neighbor to enlightenment by phoning him at 3:19 a.m. to suggest that the creaking/banging of his bed at this hateful hour that even God will not govern, could be the very reason why he has in his possession (as he likes to call them) those three little shits to tend to. I personally prefer to call them children but, respect one's personal choice of phrase.

He in turn suggests that it is the lack of creaking/banging of my own bed that has me so uptight. He invites me to join he and his playmate. I send Officer Gilman from the 3rd precinct instead.

And I, Bitch drift peaceably in to a most wondrous slumber.