I changed jobs at my office. I’m still in the same office, so I still deal with the same crap. But now I deal with it while sitting on my butt and typing up obituaries and wedding announcements and births. Oh, and with a new title: Society Editor. Oooh. Bow and kiss the ring, People. Oh yeah. It’s a lofty title with no pay raise. With it comes loads of crap and again…NO MONEY.
Talking with Brother last night he said, “So, you deal with the whole cycle of life there, I guess. Tell me you don’t run the births and deaths on the same page so people have the whole picture of life right in front of them on one page. One person leaves, a new one comes in.”
No. We don’t place the births and deaths on the same page. But that would be kind of funny if we did.
I’m not sure why I agreed to this change. A big part of me was looking forward to not having to travel so much. I’m not sure I was looking forward to sitting in the office where members of the public can now corner me on my own territory instead of out in public where I can say, “Oops…gotta run.” Now I’m just stuck at my desk, my only means of escape being: “Oops…gotta pee.” if an old lady comes in to yell at me about her notice of the Middle of Nowhere Senior Citizens not appearing in today’s Society Column Specifically for Old People.
I was doing OK with this change until I looked up and saw that my name had been erased.
See, we have this board in our newsroom that lists the names of the reporters and underneath shows their schedules so the ladies in the front of the office can tell customers they don’t know where we are instead of looking at the board see where we are and say “Oh, they’re at a meeting right now.”
[Hey, Tranny Head. Did I use the strike through right?)
And I looked up this morning and my name was GONE. I mean, I know why my name was GONE. I’m not a reporter anymore. After 10 years of reporting on Middle of Nowhere meetings, Tiny School Board meetings, Little Old Lady Awards Banquets, Senior Citizen’s Home Dinner Party’s, Tiny School plays and the like — I am no longer a reporter.
I’m a type setter.
Ugh. I’m what I hoped not to be — EVER.
This new job means sitting in the office with women who don’t know how to do anything but complain, complain, complain, complain and complain some more. It also means listening to funeral home directors tell me I typed this or that wrong, when it was really them. And it means I’ll have to have will power not to go to the vending machine and stuff myself full of chocolate bars to help relieve the stress.
Still, this job means less traveling, less wear and tear on the car, no more sitting in two hour meetings while farmers talk about their crops and THEN decide to get “down to business.” I’m serious. This used to happen.
Case in point (take that Sis K, got it right this time): I had to travel about 45 minutes once a month to this place literally in the middle of nowhere. It was at an old school that sat in the middle of farmland. Seriously. There were farms and farms and farms, cows, cows, barns, trees, and then a brick, semi-modern looking, building.
I would go into these meetings in a conference room where everyone sat at tables pulled into a half-square. I sat at the end of the half-square and waited for the meeting to start. Sometimes it seemed like it never would. I had a deadline of 10 p.m. This place was 45 minutes away from my office. The meetings started at 8 p.m.
“So, Sam, did you see that Henry got his barn up.”
Sam….”Yup. Yup.” rocks back and forth in the chair. “Loooks good. Don’t it?”
Chairman of the Board: “Sure does.”
Long period of silence broken only by a creaking chair.
It would go on like this for a half an hour to 45 minutes and then finally they would start to talk about the business of the town, which usually consisted of how much gravel they had bought for the roads and what ditch had been worked. Really stimulating stuff.
One night I finally decided I had to get back to the office and couldn’t listen to the “farm talk” anymore. I excused myself and on my way out the door I heard the Chairman say, “All right. Now that she’s leaving we can get down to business.” I looked around and he grinned and winked. Ah-ha! They knew full well what they were doing all along.
This new job, coupled with a toddler who would rather not sleep, has also meant a little less time for blogging and more nights of pure exhaustion. So, if I don’t check into your blog right away, trust me, I’ll be back. Just give my brain time to stop swirling ’round n’ ’round in my head.
And if there are any gaps in my bloggin’ check out some new and great blogs HERE.
Or even HERE. Or how about HERE.
And of course there are always my archives, over there to the right. Some of them are currently on my Typepad site, which will be up by the end of the week (I think).
Children whose parents sit and talk and laugh on that cell phone even when their three-year old screams “No!” and shoves the much younger, smaller child so hard that the much younger, smaller child falls backwards down a flight of stairs and off a two-foot high platform, bending and twisting at weird angles and then lands flat on his face in the wood chips with a hard thud. Children whose parents don’t even stand up to see what happened when much younger, smaller child begins to cry.
