Wednesday, November 19, 2008

In the Interest of Full Disclosure

I need to clarify that one (or more) of my last posts was ridden with exaggerations, speculation and confounding conflations, as follows: The Cube Lady didn’t necessarily tell the other group to move their stuff immediately. I have no idea what she said to them, because I wasn’t there. She sent me an email saying she had asked them to move their stuff, that’s all. It just gave me pleasure to think of her saying, “Move this stuff immediately!” so I reported it accordingly. (Maybe she did say that.)

And I have no idea if she used her foot to draw a line showing them where my territory extends to, but she did do that when she and I were in the cube, so she COULD have done that with the other group. She may actually have, because they moved everything to the other side of that line. But who knows?

And the other group wasn’t necessarily not speaking to me. To be perfectly accurate, if I must, one person who is usually very friendly, but who is also moody, answered a question of mine with one syllable or two right after they had to move their stuff, so I’m pretty sure he was ticked off. And another person in that group who is also moody, as it happens, did a similar thing.

But the person who by rights should have been most annoyed was actually joking around with me today, and I think the two others will probably come around in due time, so it’s not as bad as reported. (My mother is smirking right now. That’s OK. I like for my mother to be able to enjoy a smirk or two at my expense.)

I made a salad dressing Lisa recommended a week or so ago, and left it sitting on the counter until yesterday. It seemed to me it shouldn’t require refrigeration, but maybe it did, since it had a bit of fresh garlic juice in it.

I had some yesterday and it was really wonderful, and I sent Lisa and David an email saying how much I liked it, and then about two minutes later (or 30 or 60 or maybe it was two hours, but I think it was actually pretty soon), I got a hideous pain in my stomach that persisted all night, segueing this morning into intermittent nausea.

I poured the rest of the salad dressing down the drain this morning, and when I opened the lid, there was a distinct uptick in abdominal distress, as if my body was saying, “That’s the stuff! That’s the stuff!” So I think maybe I should have refrigerated it.

I would have stayed in bed, BUT: I HAD to go to the dentist, for about the seventh time in the past two months, and it was really a particularly bad week for missing a day of work. I’m on call, I am extremely busy with other projects, AND I have to move to the other cube this week.

My KQED Perspective was slated to be on this morning, and I realized I would miss it myself, because I would be on the bus, which was kind of disappointing. I told Tom and he kindly lent me his Walkman, which has a radio in it.

What ended up happening was that I took a cab up to my dentist’s office, an extravagance to be sure, but I wanted to stay in bed until the last possible moment. The reception on Tom’s Walkman turned out to be poor, so I asked the cab driver if we could just sit outside the dental office for an extra ten minutes until my thing was on, and if he’d be kind enough to change the radio to 88.5, which he did, so I got to hear it.

(By the way, the cab driver looked like an Italian Mads Mikkelsen, so that was a particularly good cab driver to sit with for ten minutes. He had nice smile lines around his eyes, too.)

When I got to work, there was a nice note from Bert H. about it, and from Tom’s mother, Ann. That was very sweet.

I stayed at work for an hour or so, but then was overwhelmed with nausea again, so I came home and went back to bed and slept for eight hours. I have not had a single bite to eat today and have no appetite at all. This was my last vacation day for the year, so I hope I feel better tomorrow.

I could take an unpaid day off and wouldn’t mind doing that, but the movers are coming tomorrow, so I just have to get there.

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