Some of my friends from far away have been asking me lately whether people around Utah, being as pious as they are known to be,“ do Halloween”. And let me tell you, my friends, a story about Halloween in Utah County!
This is my second year here, and I don’t remember quite a busy night from last year, but oh my word, my doorbell is probably numb at the moment from all the small and big pilgrims ringing it since 5 PM. I think I stopped counting at 20. And we don't even have the light on the porch on, which was, I thought, a sure sign they would "know".
I personally don’t like Halloween – nothing to judge, just a matter of personal taste – and I never buy candy, so I never open the door on this night. But tonight might have changed my mind forever! I’d rather open the door and share in the fun costumes and eager eyes than be behind closed shutters and looking like the wicked witch of the west to all my neighbors’ kids.
But even before tonight! A friend of mine came to visit us in early October – and the whole town was dressed up for Halloween. She even noticed how, driving along the mountains, outside the Provo city limits, there was Halloween décor out in the middle of nothing, on a hill. The Spanish Fork downtown was also dressed up to the occasion, as early as October 8th!
As my friend put it: "Look! Crazy Halloween decorations in the middle of nowhere!"
From years past, I have been used to people coming dressed up in costumes at work on this day, maybe sharing candy with co-workers and decorating the cubes in dollar store garb. This was Halloween at work to me in the rest of America. Today, at my new job in the midst of Utah County, home of the BYU, things were much, much more different!
Practically every aisle was decorated, and one whole area was enclosed from floor to ceiling in black tarp, with the lights out – as if in a haunted house. Around 3 PM, the entire company stopped working, practically, and every department started playing loud music, according to the theme they all picked for the department: my area had big band, pirate ship music, and the area adjacent to ours had bluegrass music, as everyone there was dressed up as “swamp”, redneck folk.
And then, the spouses (mostly wives) came in with the kids – every family had anywhere between two and five kids, and every other family had one on the way, too. Everyone was wearing a costume, even kids as small as a few months, and some of the clothes were very intricate and home tailored – nothing you can get at WalMart, I am sure. These things were involved! The makeup, too. The kids went by all the departments, and greeted everyone, picking up one piece of candy from each offering bowl, under the close policing of the parents. It was quite a disciplined affair.
Everyone, kids and parents alike, seemed to have a ton of fun! So, yeah, I think I would conclude that they do do Halloween in Utah. And even are serious about it! Well, as serious as you can be about grown men in tights, that is!
The company I work for not only afforded to let everyone play for a couple of hours, but they also paid for all the candy we gave away to folks and they bought treats for everyone, too, in the form of festive donuts, crullers, lemonade and soft drinks.
Now, what all those parents can possibly do with 5 pieces of candy (per department) x 5 kids x 10 departments + candy from all the neighborhood houses + relatives’ houses is absolutely mind numbing to me! But they surely do prepare a lot for this one night of ghoulish fun! I could almost say they could give lessons to the rest of the nation, or at least the parts I have been familiar with till now.
Spanish Fork downtown, decorated for Halloween. We noticed this on October 8th, but I am sure it had been there for a while.
So, the countdown has started. The countdown to my starting a new chapter in my life, that is. So far, everything was in sort of ahappy-go-lucky, dreamy, planning stage. Now, the doing phase has begun. And let me tell you, I feel like I am standing near a mountain of huge stuffed bears that were holding up so ever so tenderly, and someone has recently pulled a bear out of the stack, and the whole mountain moved. And I am standing there, holding on to it for dear life, so I’d prevent it from burying me under it.
Overwhelmed and scared is what I feel. I mentioned this before: my motto in life, when I left high school was “I am scared but I like it”. Now, older, and really not much wiser than then, I would say “I am scared and that’s it”. ‘Cause I surely as heck am not liking this!
And I think the issue is control. The stuff I worry about, from everything I have to do in a day is not stuff that I can control. That, the knowing and known stuff, it’s what gives me comfort. I know: it’s a truism: knowledge gives you power – so, you won’t be afraid of what you know. But only now, when I am buried under all the details and all the chores, and under the incredible amount of things that other people have to do for me, I realize this so acutely.
I am not sure what overwhelms me more: thinking all these things I am scared of will happen? Or the fact that things that I can do might not get done, because I have too many of them to do?
Just to give you an idea of what I do in a given day lately: the alarm goes off at 6 AM. I hit the snooze button for at least an hour; I get up at 7:15 or so. Sometimes later. I shower. I dress. I make up my bed “fancy”, since the house is on the market, and it has to look like no one lives here (really, people, who are you kiddin’??). I then clean out my bathroom: fold my towels just so (again, like no one uses them – yeah, right), I put the toiletries away. Then, I climb downstairs. I feed cats. I make breakfast. I pack lunch. I scoop litter, and take the trash out. Every morning. Then, I jump in the car around 8:30-9:00 – already late. Every morning.
Then, work. With all its chores: meetings, documentation updating, answer emails, make sure all you know is in some folder so someone can find it. When I am not there. Being everyone’s spare brain is not easy, ya know! Lunch is always a working lunch: either working at my desk, or running an errand for what I have to do: meeting with the wedding planner, picking up the wedding dress, buying litter for the house, buying groceries or supplies to clean up the patio, vacuuming the car, cleaning the trunk, installing a baby seat in the car, doctor’s appointments, picking up prescriptions. What have you.
Then work, again. Errands again, after work: meet with realtor. Or go home, crate the cats, since I’ll have a showing. Cook dinner, at some point. Somewhere in there, watch what I eat: I can’t possibly allow myself to gain another pound, and there is no time for walking anymore!
Email mom and friends to let them know I am alive. My emails to them are shorter and shorter every day. Got no time for long ones. Then, clean the house some more, of kitty hair and throw up, from over the day. Go to bed around 11 or 12, and try as hard as it maybe, to read at least ONE page in a book. One page. Just to pretend I disconnected and I gave my brain a break that day. It doesn’t work. I fall sleep in the first 3 minutes of “reading”.
These are the chores.
For the things I cannot control and which keep me up at night, right after the first 30 minutes of fast asleep-ness… are way more than those… I always worry the people who will see my house will let the cats out, if they don’t call to make an appointment and they come in without me crating them first. They will let at least one, the friendliest of all, out. And I will be devastated if I lost him/ them. I feel like I constantly have my front door wide open, since they put a key in the lockbox for the showings, and anyone can help themselves to my cats, house, everything. Communism instilled paranoia goes a loooong way, let me tell you.
I fear the house will never sell, because of this crappy market, and we will end up paying the mortgage on this big monster for 2-3-5 years. We will be poor and he will hate me for my debt! People get over buyer’s remorse when buying a house or a car in a couple of months. Three years since I bought this – I never went over mine. And now the painful feeling of being “stuck with it” has to be shared with this other wonderful and innocent human being that accepted me in their life! Guilt. Lots of it!
I fear, I will crate the cats, but then they will go crazy, because they really don’t like to be crated, as free as they always are.
I fear that when we drive across country with them for 4 days, they will pant and get crazy in the brain in the crates, and I will have to put them to sleep if they never recover. I fear silly things like these, all the time.
I fear I will kill them one time, by forcing them to enter the crates, although I have had vets teach me how to do it properly, with minimal to zero discomfort to them. But I love them too much, anything “against their will” hurts me.
I try making the crates fun: I sprinkle cat nip and try to hide toys in there, hoping they’ll like it. They look dubious! And I feel, once more, guilty.
I fear everyone will arrive for the wedding (because everyone but me is flying in, and no one from a drivable distance, really!) one or two days late, and all our schedule for the wedding week will be shot. I fear my future husband will be late, again, coming into town, and we will not have time to get a marriage license … I feared till yesterday that they’ll burn my dress at the alterations place and where am I going to find a beautiful dress that fits me again?? Well, they didn’t burn it. In fact, it turned out beautifully, and I am so tickled to have it in my possession now, all fit and ready to go!
I fear (still) that my nephew will get very sick again, and my sister will not be able to make it to the wedding. But, alas, she has plane tickets now, and she at least has that “insurance” for my troubled psyche …And he has felt so much better lately, bless his heart!
I am a constant knot of emotions, thoughts and fears. I sound like a crazy person, I know … And this is, like I said, the beginning. And these are all things that will get sorted out with time, patience and a clear mind. But alas, I do not have time for clarity right now. Just for shear panic, it seems.
I needed to at least lay them down on paper, and let them fly into the world, so they will leave my brain and heavy chest.
With all this running around during the day and being awake with nutty thoughts at night, I have grown to enjoy even the little bit of waiting at the traffic light! Even the wait in a doctor’s waiting room, which normally grinds my nerves. I don’t even read there anymore. I can’t. My brain is on overload. I need to let it just rest. Just be. Just have no purpose at all for a minute. Or two. I enjoy waiting lately – and I don’t even recognize myself as typing this!
Did you hear what they’ve been doing in New York City now ? They have blocked off streets in Times Square – yes, as in the busiest, most crowded and happening square possibly on the planet – closed down the traffic, and let people sit there on deck chairs. Just stop and sit on deck chairs - take a break during their crazy days: they have street artists, even yoga, and lots of nothing, but sitting and chatting, and being. The Budget Travel magazine editor ended her editorial about this wonderful initiative with “somewhere, there is a deck chair with your name on it”.
And ever since I read that, I keep praying that I’d find mine. For even just one second, I can block off “the traffic” which is now my life and just sit. And do nothing at all. But sit on a mental deck chair. I hope I find it soon, or else my “mental” knees will give out. And I do need a rest. The long road is just ahead!
Gypsy, making peace with the cat carrier - but not quite.
I truly hate stress... I hate it because it has power like nothing else to just cling onto you, like fungus! You don't want it! You don't need it! You tell it to f... off, but it's there, and it's going to stay, no matter how much begging and shaking off you'll do. And not only does it cling, but it eats at you, like mold at a wall ... Just chips away at your body, and mind, and soul, and sanity!!
Ever since I can remember, random people, strangers, friends, people I don't care that much about, even, come and open up to me, usually, about their issues, and problems, and frustrations that they cannot share with so-and-so ... Mom and my sister say I am like the "mother of all wounded soldiers", always taking care of someone's jaded soul ... It's true ... And this used to be a source of pride. But I guess growing old does funny things to your patience level. All it is now, is a source of frustration!
Since you've been around the block a time or twelve now, that you're older, there is only so much you can take about this and that's more or less malicious gossip rather than their wounded selves' sob stories. Plus, I hate repetition, and all that - repeated day in and day out, for days, and months and years on end, heard from the same people over and over again, makes me want to scream!
Someone I admire dearly said to me the other week: "you can't give kindness if you don't accept kindness". I so agree with that! And I think it's the same way with stress: no matter how much you know about non-attachment, no matter how much yoga you do, how much Yoga Journal magazine and Patanjali you read every day ... if you don't associate yourself with people who understand these things just as much as you understand them, you'll never be free of stress, worry, negativity and just plain ... given-up-ness... and desperation ... All these things that people bring to you will cling onto you and eat at your self ... no matter how much you want and try to shake it off. Water can put out a fire, but the quantity of water has to be proportionate with that of the fire. And frankly, I am drying out!!
But I wish one would have a choice there, when the association with the wrong kind of people ... puts food on your table.
I have unique friends. They make me laugh. They make me cry. They never make me wonder why I am their friend. It's simple: they're unique. And I take that over boredom any day of the week.
Until recently, I thought only I and my good friend C., can enjoy crude, "bathroom humor", we call it . But as I have discovered, my other friend, A., is joining in as a new (to me) and keen observer of the daily routine in such a mundane place as our own office bathrooms.
Just like C. and me, A. is also a Landmark employee, and his observations on their bathroom situation in VA are poignant while hysterical.
With the hope that I can make some of you smile... I am posting his latest update about their office bathroom and his amusing, but also desperate plea for a change.
And my own add-on: after reading both C's and A's bathroom diaries, I must admit: I never knew boys were so complicated! I always figured they were just meant by God to forever pee against a tree... It so happens they can be so very picky about their "private rooms"...
Who whoudavthunkit??
Here he follows:
We have the most messed-up men’s room situation.
Way back, eons and eons ago, when they flew me out here to interview and see the place, the physical assets of the building turned me off right away. My fold office, before I moved to VA, had a “nice” feel about. It was a 100-year-old building too, but it had been updated nicely. We had nice cubes, nice public areas, nice workspaces, I had a nice office, the restrooms were spacious and modern and, well “nice”. In VA things were old, tired and worn out. R., my soon-to-be-boss at the time apologized about how sad things looked and indicated that a remodel was coming in a few months – in fact one of my first assignments, should I chose to accept it, would be to shop for and select the new furniture for the newsroom. He particularly apologized for the men’s room.
Yes, bathrooms are the places where we do our dirty business. They’re not vacation villas. That much I know (even though my dad’s sister once went into the wrong restroom at the mall and mistook the urinal for a special hand-washing sink...and the urinal cake for a bar of soap). But this facility was not only dirty but dangerous.
There were tiles missing from the ceiling so that you could peer upward many long and lonely feet. I’m sure that late at night the bats would escape through those gaping holes in the ceiling to nibble the hair on the men seated below (fortunately, being fur-challenged, I never had an incident...but I heard the stories!).
The room had the feeling that it had once been used for something else and that adding toilets and sinks was some sort of emergency measure...mandated by some far-away pagan deity. Everything was crammed in there. Six toilet stalls for example where only four should be placed. The frames around the doors were so broken and out of alignment that the doors either wouldn’t close or if they came close, they wouldn’t latch. One got very clever using sophisticated postures to keep the door closed whilst taking care of personal business (particularly difficult of the stresses of the day called for an afternoon quick-jerk).
The plumbing leaked, too. From minor drips to the occasional Niagara burst, we had it all. You could almost always count on the floor being slippery and wet...all the while hoping it was just good old H20 and not the offcast of vision-impaired senior men.
Soap? You want soap? We had no soap dispensers. Instead, cakes of bar soap. Six sinks, too. SIX! Cheek-by-jowl as they say. Too many, too close. But there only ever seemed to be a single bar of soap. And it was wet and soft and small. And who wants to use a bar of soap in a situation like that? No me, I’m here to tell ya! Talk about a cootie farm!
Of the six aforementioned toilet partitions, only three had functional toilet paper dispensers. So if you were a visitor and not well-versed in second-floor men’s room navigation, you could easily find yourself in a messy situation. Of those that remained, they were of some odd 1950s vintage...originally made of NASA-designed plastic. Over time the plastic had become brittle and cracked and broken...leaving razor-sharp edges poking out hither and yon. I don’t mind confessing that my thighs were more than once bloodied and scraped by those gnawing guards-of-the-roll.
Speaking of paper, if you wanted to dry your hands, you had better hope you were using the facilities shortly after what’s-her-bucket the cleaning lady had visited. Otherwise the tiny and precarious “shelf” that held a small supply of folded towels would be a vast wasteland and you’d be left to shake your hands in the air like a giddy Valley Girl or you’d do a quick wipe-down on your trousers.
One of the stalls, the first you encountered upon entering, was for the use of the handicapped. Wider, deeper and with hand-rails, it was intended to be helpful to those in a wheelchair. Only it wasn’t even the same width as a wheelchair! Once I saw a poor kid desperately try to get in there but it was clear the chair wasn’t going to fit. Upon my thusly observation he left the chair outside and hobbled in to take care of his business. Humiliation was added to his humiliation.
This restroom is in a public part of the building...near where advertising customers and visitors to the newsroom traverse. So members of the public were joyfully received by this horrendous facility. Many such visitors have bags, briefcases, papers – the accouterments of business. But where might they place such articles while needing both hands free? On the wet floor of course!
My final observation would be around the dozens (hundreds perhaps) of missing tiles on the floor. Big, gaping holes, revealing concrete, lint and traces of The Plague, littered the floor. Catch the toe of your shoe on such a precipice and you could be getting your next drink from the current plumbing leak.
Ancient history you say! Surely, A. whines about pre-2000 conditions! Certainly enlightened management has since corrected these ills!
Well, recently, even with the horrible budget situation, they announced that the facility would be totally remodeled and brought up to standard. The penis-toting population of our building rejoiced! Furthermore, the powers that be decided to solicit feedback from the employees about what should be done since it was to be a “total remodel”. Being a proactive and solution-minded individual, I submitted the following very helpful suggestions:
*) Five toilets instead of six...use the space evenly so each stall has plenty of room...and so the handicapped stall will accommodate a wheelchair.
*) Build a shelf system with some hooks so people have a place to put their “stuff” and jackets and the like.
*) Cut the number of sinks in half – there are too many and they’re too close.
*) Install liquid soap dispensers.
*) Install a couple of paper-towel dispensers.
*) Install a couple of trash cans (oh, I can’t believe I forgot to mention that the only trash receptacle before was a hole in the wall with a garbage bag in it...as Dave Barry would say, I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP! The hole in the wall was so ragged that the trash bag was always ripped and torn, thus all kinds of incredibly nasty stuff leaked out into the wall cavity).
I learned from colleagues that my ideas were not unique.
So a little while back the room was closed. Off limits. Need to “go”? ”Go” to another floor. Men came. Men left. Noises were made. Dust was raised. Equipment came. Equipment went. Time went on. Days passed. Weeks passed. The room was locked up each night. Months passed.
Ta Da! Without ceremony the room was reopened.
Now what do we have? Well, remember those gaps in the floor where the tile was missing? They poured Plaster-O-Paris or something in those. Looks like a big old turd dried up in the gap. And after only a few weeks, that patch job is now breaking loose.
Remember the leaking plumbing? Well, it still drips and leaks. But everything has been replaced with battery-operated automatic flushers! And they like to “automatically flush” while you’ve got your ass parked on the seat...mid-deposit so to speak! For your convenience of course.
Oh, and they replaced the partitions!! But they put them in the exact same place on the same mountings...so they’re a different color but still don’t work.
Oh, but I shouldn’t complain. Because every stall now has a toilet paper dispenser! Yea! Mounted about six inches off the ground so you have to bend over and reach below your line of site. And reach UPWARDS, into the mystery cavern inside the dark, smoky plastic device, to try and find the tail of paper (and Buddha help you if it’s a fresh roll and that tail is still glued down!). And of course after a few hours you’re successful in gaining possession of the tail and you yank with glee...only to have three tiny, single-ply squares of 180-grit sandpaper break off in your grip...not nearly the manly-sized wad any good American needs.
But we did get soap dispensers. Foam soap dispensers. They are battery-operated, too (I hope they included battery-replacement in their budget). And they eject the tiniest little “splurtz” of foam. It takes about eight such “splurtzes” to even think about cleaning anything (I’m one of three employees who washes his hands). But it’s on a timer so you have to stick your paw under the electronic eye, wait two seconds, remove paw, wait two seconds, and repeat.
And because our company cares about our health and the spread of Bird Flu, they turned off the cold water. Because as you know, washing with cold water doesn’t kill the bugs. So they welded the cold-water taps shut, BUT DIDN’T TELL ANYONE! So until you’re clued in, you bust a wrist trying to get cold water...for refreshing your face for example on a smeltzy day like today. And the hot water...it is hot...autoclave hot! Cook the beans hot!
I guess that’s about it. We can still see the bats, still don’t have a place to put papers and jackets and those auto-flushers flush the night away, even when nobody’s home.
Boss: “A., where have you been, the meeting started 45 minutes ago!”
