warriormonkey

I was in a dumpster today

Upon entering my tiny casa each eve, I carelessly toss my thick ring of keys onto a little ledge. The sort of ledge that frames a random glassless window smack in the middle of a big open room.

On this particular eve, underneath the ledge (cue threatening music) sat a gaping Whole Foods bag stuffed with old magazines ready for the dumpster.

And, to the dumpster they went.

A big industrial sort of dumpster on site for nearby renovations.

A green mammoth of a dumpster that requires a few wind-up swings just to launch a bag over the top.

Enter in the intervening hours: a mischievous kitten. One best known for objecting to closed doors and batting all manner of personal and decorative items off of tables, shelves and ledges onto the floor.

Getting ready to leave the next day, I searched the upstairs and downstairs for my keys – digging in pockets, peering under cushions, patting down blankets, even opening the freezer just to be sure. No sign. I snagged the spare car keys and set out.

Upon returning, I resumed the hunt. Not an inch unturned, I concluded that they were not in the house. Two theories presented themselves – the paranoid and frightening vs. the genuinely unlucky. Either I had left them dangling in the lock outside (far from unprecedented) and a tricky neighbor had whisked them away. Or, the mischievous kitten had batted them into the Whole Foods bag and thus they were waiting in the dumpster.

A restless night later – punctuated by panicked dreams of a stranger keying in and loosing my pets in the snow – I decided to investigate the dumpster.

No ladder. Just a thick, stinky green steel wall nearly twice my height.

I pulled myself up on a ledge to get a closer look. And, lo and behold a bright star appeared … or, rather, a beaten and bulging Whole Foods bag covered by only two relatively intact plastic ones. The dumpster nearly empty, they were all a long way down.

Clad in my dog walking gear – nylon jacket, jeans, brightly striped boots – I tied my faithful old dog to a nearby stake and sought a stick. Balancing halfway up the side of the dumpster, I dug for my sack, but couldn’t get leverage. So, back to the house for a golf club.

This time, I caught the bag’s handles and even as they ripped, I was not thwarted. I pulled harder to tear the paper and reveal more of the contents … including my keys. Salvation was near!

Now, faced with all manner of charges and fees to gain new entry to my office, car and home, I decided to go for it. I scaled the side of the green beast and leapt in.

The cold was not enough to dampen the smell. But, still I snatched my frozen keys and got ready to climb out.

No traction, though, nothing to hold onto and the big steel wall opened only well above my head. Still a crafty little dumpster diver, I stacked some bags of various refuse and boosted myself onto the filthy lip. From there, a clean white pile of snow broke my fall and I was off to get ready for work…

With an excellent excuse for being 15 minutes late…

Christmas angels

I am my parents’ second favorite child. The fact that there are only two of us is only tangentially important to that ranking. Nonetheless, there is strong anecdotal evidence that I was the favorite of another generation – perhaps a wiser, more seasoned set, or perhaps merely an older one: the grandparents.

Years and years of Christmases proved their regard for me as I unwrapped toys and plush pets and all manner of surprising sweaters. And, year-after-year, my sister opened … a snowsuit. Big puffy overall paints. An enormous matching jacket, complete with faux-fur trimmed hood. All in exciting colors like cool gray and tan.  Lucky for the grandparents, she grew into a new size every year.

Maybe it was the delight I took in grandma’s specialty: wheel-shaped pasta with meat chunks and runny sauce. Perhaps it was the interest I took in grandpa’s weird hobbies – from painting slates with mallards to collecting hundreds of teddy bears. Perhaps it was merely that I thought the multitude of housecoats my grandmother lived in were glamorous and intriguing. Perhaps I simply had the benefit of being the first girl – a welcome, if petulant, relief from their rowdy grandson.

But more holiday triumphs were to come, long after my sister was trusted in the snow in less-than-fully-waterproof-wear.

The first Sunday school in December was more well-attended than most. Our core of five mismatched teens whose parents insisted on weekly church attendance was supplemented by Beth, an absurdly tall independent type who I would later recognize was an early devotee to J Crew. Lisa, the pretty daughter of indulgent parents who wouldn’t even really look at the rest of us. Brett, a would-be bully without quite the muscles to pull it off. And, others… none of whom had quite learned how to turn the conversation from “why Christians are persecuted every day in school” to something more interesting about family life. They simply sat uncomfortably in the way of people who aren’t sure how seriously to take the seeming fervor of their companions and waited…

Waited for the casting call.

***

In a nearby barn, at 7 o’clock on Christmas eve, all the church families and friends and relatives piled out of wood-paneled station wagons, Honda accords and Ford pickup trucks for the Christmas Eve service. Their path lit by candles in waxed paper bags, the dads led families bundled almost beyond recognition to itchy pews of hay. By 7:05, the barn was packed almost to warmth with legs dangling down from the lofts and worshippers standing as far back as the stalls.

At the very front of it all was the live nativity.

With a real donkey!

And, Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, Wise Men, shepherds and, of course, The Angels. Clad in discarded off-white choir robes, topped with a circle of silver tinsel, the three angels were the most beautiful part of the nativity – all hope and innocence and wisdom. 

And, ever year, I insisted on being once of them. An angel. The very top of the nativity – the beautiful angels stood on hay bales behind the scruffy shepherds and the gaudy wise men.

As the shivering crowd sang their Christmas carols, glad to stand up for the chance to stomp feeling back into their feet, the live nativity gathered in a half circle around the minister, receiving all of the Christmas cheer.

Looking back, I was merely a teenager with zits and frizzy hair and two sweaters, longjohns and acid washed jeans tucked bulkily under a tattered white robe. But, in the moment, I was as happy as I could be.

And, at the end of the night, when the men started pushing and the tractors circled around to budge the family sleighs from the muddy fields, all would witness that my whining was a little less than usual, that my caustic comments were fewer, that my scowls were shallower … all in deference to the glow of the my shiny silver halo. Or, by being the center of attention in my own mind.

Getting to Know You

I've lost interest in repetitive daytime TV, screaming hair bands and the voyeuristic memoirs of addicts. But I am certainly not without guilty pleasures. Chief among them: women's magazines. Preferably accompanied by chocolate and chardonnay (despite their content focus on fitness and nutrition). From Self to Real Simple to O, none are too ingratiatingly obvious for a quiet night at home under a big blanket.

My favorite (you may know as this is certainly not the first time I've gone on about it) is Real Simple. It is gorgeous. And, full of real voices that occasionally do more than lay on the pretty pages.

I'll let you know how the mac-and-cheese recipe and framing ideas work out, but, for now, onto my favorite article in the November edition...

Getting to Know You

It's premise is that we can spend a lifetime of holidays and sunday dinners talking with our relatives about baseball games, menus and injuries without ever really coming to know them. We can feel close to near strangers.

So, Real Simple put together a list of questions - our lives in an evening. The short cut to intimacy.

Raised on Cosmo quizzes and distant relationships, I am naturally predisposed to love this list.

So, I'm Download questions.pdf . Taking it with me. And, answering it all myself, too. This is the record of me as I am now. I won't get through it all in one post and I certainly won't start with childhood as the list does (geez, gotta ramp up here, editors), but, still ... some answers from me now. And, answers from some of my loved ones soon...

Work (Leigh, 2005)

What was your first job, and how did you get it?
Waitressing at 15 in a stinky dinner in a strip mall anchored by a hardware store. I think my dad drove me in to ask about a job. I walked up to the old Greek who ran the place, nervously asked him about it and he hired me. No applications or paperwork. Just a punch card - $2/hour + tips. BYOA - bring your own apron. My mother sewed mine. Two short black ones with pockets. They, like the rest of my clothes, reeked by the end of my shift.

I worked at a counter, near the short-order grill. Bacon, onions, beefy smells. Mostly I poured coffee. For the same cast of ten or so old men who drank the free refill all evening, talked with each other about old days, smoked cigarettes, flirted with the waitresses, and tipped me 50-cents hours later.

I cut lemons for iced tea, brewed coffee, delivered the occasional slice of pie or daily special slathered in gravy. I ate half a loaf of bread every night - warm, squishy white covered with butter. And, sometimes, several bowls of soup, but only when chicken bow tie was the special.

I made about $20/night. My dad drove me home with the windows down ('cause of the short order funk).  Even the money stank.

Once I stepped in a big pan of soup in the dark walk-in refrigerator. We served it anyway. The kitchen staff blared AC/DC all night. I broke no fewer than three coffee pots (full of boiling coffee). On Christmas eve, a couple came in at the last minute for open-faced turkey sandwiches. They tipped me $20. I was thrilled.

How did you decide what field to enter?
Decide, decide… hmmm. I’m not sure I decided or even that I’m really in a field. Currently I’m in advertising. Before that software. Before that PR. Before that security. I studied journalism in college. I picked that because teachers and adults of various kinds had always told me I was a good writer. And, I had the all-too-typical youthful desire to investigate, motivate, inspire.

I lost interest in journalism long before I finished the program. Long hours, poor pay, people with much greater ambition and desire than I would ever muster.

My first two career jobs were jobs of opportunity. I landed in marketing / advertising and would like to stay there because it feels comfortable to me. It’s creative and fun and rarely feels like work. It comes easily to me, yet can still be a challenge. No one’s life will be made greatly better or greatly worse by what I do. It is a career of the uncommitted. And, of the inspired.

Did your parents influence your approach to work or your choice of career?
My dad definitely did. No matter what job he had, he always had the jack-of-all-trades element to him – in the field, he was the one who could fix the computers; in management, he knew what to do when the roof leaked. You could go to my dad for anything – he never had just one role, never followed the letter of his job description. I’ve definitely picked that up. And, it’s kept me at small companies where everyone in entrepreneurial. Or should be.

But, too, he worked for the government his whole life. Same office. Every day. For decades. And as safe of a choice as that was – good benefits, retirement at 57, etc., -- it’s a path I could never follow.

My mother served more as a cautionary tale work-wise. She dropped out of college to help my dad finish. She stayed at home for years taking care of my sister and me. When she went back, there was so little opportunity. So much baggage for a working mother. Scary.

Was money a big factor for you?
Ha, no. Did I say I’m in advertising??

Was there one person—a mentor,maybe—who had a big impact on your working life?
Definitely: Barbara Silk. My first boss in Chicago. She gets a whole separate entry. With some answers to this list from her – coming soon!

Is there anything you think is absolutely crucial to success at work?
A sense of ownership. What I mean when I say entrepreneurial is  I feel personally responsible for group goals; I figure out how to do what needs done.

That has a sharper edge, too. A little perspective might be a much quicker route to success.

What was the best job you ever had? The worst?
My current job is the best – secretive boss and crazy financial pressures aside, it’s genuinely fun. I work with incredibly talented people, good clients, fun projects.

The worst job was … well, there was a year at my job at a security company that was very bad. My boss screamed; the work was impossible; I imagined quitting all day every day (would have but that there were no other opportunities in the little town I went to school in). The other years there were certainly better, though… And, I had the nearly the same experience for a year in Chicago five years later.

So, I’d say the worst was a summer gig at a going-out-of-business department store. The work ranged from standing around doing nothing for hours to trying to referee all out fights for $19.99 quilts in new sales bins.

When you were a kid, what did you imagine your adult life would be like? Did your career have any major turning points?
I had a poster of New York City in my bedroom. And, I always imagined that I would move there, wear all black clothes and write for the Wall Street Journal.

There were no major turning points, though – I just got comfortable elsewhere. I’ve never been one much driven by ambition. There are so many more interesting things than work in the world.

What were the best moments of your working life? Any lingering regrets?
I’m not sure I ever really thought of any best moments. I’ve surely been proud at client compliments or after great presentations. But, the best moments are really just the ones when I’m happy to be there, doing good work, engaged with a team … and, those don’t really net memorable stories.

As for regrets, I always regret my temper. And wish I could better leave my ego at home.

On balance, how did you like your chosen field?
Love it.

If you had it all to do over again, would you choose the same path?
If I had to do it all over again … I’d probably build software, but I think I’m a better person (more outgoing, more creative, more engaged) for the work I've done.