Sunday Stealing: The "You Can't Be Missed" Meme (Part 2)

I love Sunday Stealing ... lots of fun, lots of opportunity to find out interesting stuff about others, and ... uh, did I mention fun ;-)?

The "You Can't Be Missed" Meme (Part 2)

16. What was the last thing you did that was totally selfish, yet you feel no guilt?
You know, I can't think of anything selfish I've done in recent memory for which I feel no guilt. That's not to say that I'm unselfish ... I'm just also carrying around quite a guilty conscience, I guess ;-) Actually, I kicked Belle off of the good TV so I could watch last week's NCIS episode on XFinity this afternoon. Now that I think about it, I don't even feel that badly about it ... Hmm, maybe not as guilty a conscience as I thought.

17. Tell us about a film fave of yours that we probably have not seen.
The Legend of Billie Jean. I LOVED that movie when I was a kid ... I kept track of how many times I'd seen it (ended up being over 200), could recite the whole thing, it was just oddball obsession. It's not even that good a film ...

18. When was the last time you kissed someone that you shouldn't have on the lips?
Hmmm...January or February, whenever I went to Burlington.

19. When was the last time you cooked something for someone not in your family?
The Sunshine Committee at my work (yes, of course I'm a member of the Sunshine Committee :-)) had a "pre-vacay buffet" the Friday before April vacation. My mom made a breakfast casserole for it, and I helped a little ... I cracked the eggs, did the stirring, put on the bacon, and I think she did everything else.

20. When was the last time you danced like a crazy person?
Friday night. I think. I don't remember much about Friday night. I do know I did karaoke (badly) because one of my friends took a video of the event on my Droid. Anyway, karaoke usually goes hand in hand with dancing like a crazy person in my world.

21. When was the last time you just wanted to be invisible?
Saturday morning. I couldn't stop throwing up and I had to go to a meeting and every time I ate or drank anything (including coffee) I had to go running for the bathroom. It was pretty horrible.

22. When was the last time you got a gift you absolutely hated?
I don't get a lot of gifts, actually, in large part because my family opines that I'm hard to buy gifts for. Anyway, I would never hate a gift that someone went out of their way to get for me ... that would just be in bad taste. Dislike, maybe ... okay, my mother got me a leather journal the last time she went to Italy. I'm not a leather journal person. I'm not a journal person period. I'm not a longhand person. And I feel tremendous guilt every time I see that journal that I'm never going to use yet cannot throw away or give away because I know my mom's heart was in the right place ... gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.


23. When was the last time you got into a physical fight? (If NEVER, let us know about a time that you got close to a fight.)
Does "physical fight" means either getting beaten up on by your ex-husband or getting in between two brawling teenagers? If not, I haven't been in a physical fight since high school.

24. When was the last time you had to sleep with a light on?
Well, since Belle sleeps in my room most of the time and she needs the light on to sleep, it's pretty much a constant thing.

25. When was the last time you were under some serious stress?
April vacation. I'm going to choose not to elaborate.

26. When was the last time you watched your favorite movie?
I don't really have a favorite movie, so to speak, just a large body of films that I adore. I don't watch movies anywhere near as much as I used to ... I need to work on that : )

27. What song did you most recently download?
"Alejandro" by Lady Gaga. Please don't judge.

28. What would you say is your favorite hobby?
Writing.

29. What is your favorite thing to do when you hang out with friends?
Laugh, talk, go to interesting places and do interesting things.

30. What would you rather do: shower or bathe with that celebrity that you are crushing on?
Shower, of course ;-)

I'm Sorry, Kermit!

When I was seventeen, I hit a chipmunk on my way to work. It was the first time I'd ever killed anything in my life (I'm one of those people that catches a spider or bumblebee then releases them outside--the only exception is mosquitos), and I was distraught. I was such a mess, in fact, that I actually got sent home from work because I couldn't stop crying.

I've had other roadkill incidents since then, and while I always feel badly about it, I no longer go into hysterics. I mean, sometimes those squirrels just run right out in front of you. I always try to dodge them if possible, but sometimes there's just nothing you can do.

Something happened one night last week that reminded me of my utter devastation over the first chipmunk I hit, and it got me pondering the proverbial food chain and the equity (or inequity, I guess you'd say) of the animals, big and small, that are killed incidentally by human beings.

I live very close to the ocean, and there is a lot of marshland surrounding the roads near my house. Sometimes at night, you can hear the frogs singing, a beautiful choir that's obviously not planned but somehow sounds intentional anyway.

One night last week, I was coming home from dinner in Massachusetts with a friend. It was pretty late--bordering on midnight--and it had been raining all day and most of the night. All of a sudden, with no warning at all, the boggy road I was on was covered with frogs. Covered.

I felt a twinge of the girl I was at seventeen rise up inside as I realized that I was driving over frogs. Like, multitudes of frogs. We're talking froggie family reunion here.

I considered reversing up the road, changing direction, getting back on the highway, and going home in a way that would have allowed me to circumvent the avenue of amphibians. If I'd been seventeen, I would without question have done it. There were two things that stopped me:

1) I could see in my rear view mirror that the frogs that had escaped certain death under the deadly wheels of my car were hopping over their dead and injured brethren, bound for the relative safety of the moonlit marshes on either side of the road. They had avoided the wheel of fortune's death knell once, and it seemed cruel on a whole bunch of levels to reverse over them--I don't know much, but I do know that fate only goes your way so many times, and they'd already been scared and shaken.

2) It was very late, I was exhausted, and I wanted to be home as quickly as possible.

And so I plowed ahead, flattening countless frogs in the process because they were so prolific that attempting to dodge them was futile. For nearly a mile, though, I weaved my little sedan slowly around the larger gathering spots, avoiding sitting water because they really seemed to conglomerate in and around puddles on the road.

And I cried, not with the sharp and sudden agony of knowing that I'd killed a little chipmunk dashing across the street but with a longer, stronger awareness that the road was basically paved with frogs, that I did not want to hurt them and wished that they would hop off to froggie endeavors that would have kept them off the road, and that, ultimately, there was absolutely nothing I could do to change my undesired mass murder of dozens, maybe hundreds of frogs.

It occurred to me as I drove, trying to ignore the fact that the normally smooth road was characterized by scores of small but frequent bumps, that there were many metaphors to be drawn here ... and that none of them were happy.

Workaholic

Okay, I'm officially a workaholic. Who in their right mind wouldn't rather be home than at work? Uh ... me.

I hate missing work. It's very possible that this is due entirely to the field I'm in, but I suspect that doesn't have as much to do with it as I once thought. I didn't work last summer, and I almost drove myself insane, never mind what I did to Addie, Belle, and Pythagorus (also the dog and cat).

Of course, I can remember enjoying days off when I worked in other fields, but that's more than likely because I didn't really love my job. It's weird, but Belle has been pretty content without me hovering over her, and I'm finding myself at loose ends.

Also, there's so much going on at work that I feel wrong for not being there. My family always comes first with me, but days like today are kind of difficult. Belle is too sick to go to daycare, but healthy enough to eat a Burger King kid meal with great enthusiasm. My black lab, Sonja, is pretty pumped because we have to crate her during the day when we're all gone (she does things like eat socks and underwear when she's out ... that surgery's pretty expensive) and instead she gets to run wild with Belle.

All I can think about are the things I should be doing at work. What is wrong with me?