zeldafitz

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Life at the Puppy Mill

Yeah, I guess what’s hard—why is it hard?—is the relentlessness of the whole gig. Like you’re sick, with an annoying cough, the office worker’s version of kennel cough, lightheaded, a little clammy queasy—just this ongoing vague malaise that needs to be in bed, but in deference to The Machine we slog through.

I took four horse pill vitamin C’s this morning; I think that contributed to the queasiness. Coughed up a lung, swallowed some CVS “Tussin” and sort of drifted thru the door amid the cheery sunny faces of my bambini. And the Birthday Boy, MZA. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MZA!!

Yesterday was The Discouraged Project Everything is Broken Opera. The printer was broken, the copier was broken—copies that I had to send FED f%$#@ Ex of course—and kept “jamming” every four pages. I went to the guy that sits in the copier room and I said, “You don’t mind if I shoot myself do you?”

He laughed.

Then he helped me. And laughed as I continued to mutter caustic frightening weird things. He has a good sense of humor and also must like children because I kind of act like a petulant child when Everything Starts to Go Wrong.

I was in and out of teary mode all day long—I don’t know why, who can explain these minor blips of sanity incontinence? I can’t.

OK, so then it’s 5 o’clock and MZA calls and asks when I’m leaving and I realize, oh, Kennel Cough Dog, time to go home. Time to make the donuts.

So I leave, all philosophically dejected and all, and I get on the elevator to go up in the parking garage. And you know what happens next. It stops. Between floors. OH YES IT DOES. And I am banging futilely on all the buttons, uh-oh, here come the tears. And I said, inside my head, “The paramedics are going to have to CUT ME OUT OF HERE with the JAWS OF LIFE because the nervous breakdown has BEGUN."

Pause.

Then the doors opened on the third floor and I got out. And drove home.