How, you might ask, is it possible for a person to be grumpy when surrounded by purring felines, sipping a glass of good Cabernet Franc, and watching ONCE MORE WITH FEELING? I mean…the Buffy musical generally cures all ills. Cats are like Tribbles – holding one is an automatic stress reducer. But when three cats are vying for lap space with my MacBook, it makes writing very difficult. “Put ’em down!” you say.
Right. YOU try it. I put one down, another takes its place, like army ants. I am Leningan and the cats are my army ants. Except they don’t strip my flesh from my bones if they catch me sleeping. And if you’ve never read the story Leningan and the Ants or seen THE NAKED JUNGLE (with a VERY young Chuck Heston as the lead and Eleanor Parker as his mail order bride wearing a truly amazing brassiere throughout the film), you will be wondering what the hell I’m talking about. Get thee to Netflix, says I!
But I digress.
I am specifically grumpy because, after a wonderful yoga class tailored to help boost my immune system (people at work have been dropping like flies with influenza), I pinched a nerve my neck and shoulder while shredding some confidential documents at work. As office manager (or Senior Adminstrative Coordinator, depending on which business card I hand you) I’m in charge of purchasing office supplies. So when our old wimpy shredder jammed and no amount of coaxing, cleaning or kicking could make it work again, I bought a new one. I wanted a macho shredder this time around, one that could take at least 15 pages without pause. I found one in the Quill catalogue advertised to shred multiple layers, CDS…it was even supposed to eat staples!
Sigh.
My macho shredder is a big wimp.
But Spike’s cheekbones…okay, feeling better now… Sing, Spike, sing! Let me rest in peace indeed…
Sorry. I do love me my Buffy musical…especially Spike. Grrrrrrrowwwwwllllffffff!
Back to the shredder. This supposed Superman of shredders is a total wuss. Yes, it does eat staples. But ask it to eat more than 5 pieces of paper at a time and it’s all *cough* *cough*…’it’s too much! I feel faint! Give me mah smellin’ salts!’ There’s a huge bag to collect the shredded paper, but the bag only fills a quarter of the way before the machine decides it’s full and stops running. You can’t hang the bag out of the front in order to make more room because if the door’s open, it won’t run. Stupid, temperamental piece o’ crap. And insult to injury, I pinched the nerve while stuffing the shred down into the bag.
I mean, what a dippy way to injure myself. It’s almost worse than throwing out one’s back while sneezing. “I hurt myself shredding!”
Although I could let people think I was talking about shredding waves. Anyone who’s seen me surf would know better.
It’s hard to fight the good fight against flu bugs when you can’t turn your head without pain. My birthday is Saturday and I don’t want to be sick or in pain. I’ve got plans, dagnabbit! I’m going to a Sisters in Crime meeting with Dave ad then we’re going to Rick and Jen’s for a duo birthday celebration (me and Jen, whose birthday was yesterday) involving a lamb dinner cooked by Rick, excellent wine and movies. We are bringing SKYSCRAPER, a truly craptacular DIEHARD ripoff with Anna Nicole Smith in the Bruce Willis role. I mean, you don’t get much worse than that. In my world, that much bad is really really good.
So no flu! No neck pain! And no more stupid wimpy shredder!
Ah well. If I still feel crabby tomorrow night, I’ll put on the ‘Buffy and Spike bring down the house’ episode and play the last 10 minutes over and over again. I’ll take my cheap thrills where I can get ’em, thank you!
