My brain knows many limits

I came across this offer today for a blog makeover. If you think this page looks pretty shabby, then you should nominate it. Even you, person who got here by googling “what a lady looks like going to the bathroom” (and by the way, is that really such a mystery?). Because, let me tell ya, I’m not going to be making it over myself. I don’t do that. That computery stuff. Hey Andy Zulauf – remember that one computer class we took together in college? That was more tortuous to me than boot camp – and that’s saying something.

So, now that I’ve asked you to help me out of my own ignorance combined with laziness for every bettering myself in this area… I feel like I pressure to not be so lazy that I can’t write anything else… hmmm…

Have I mentioned that here at work part of my unofficial job is to write emails and make phone calls for my coworker from China? Although she speaks very good English (far and away better than my two phrases of Mandarin. Let’s face it, “I want to see you naked” and “My boyfriend plays the guitar” are not going to take me very far should I ever find myself in China) she’s a little self-conscious about it being imperfect, so she will write down a little of what she wants to say, explain it to me, and then push a pen and paper in my face and say “you write it.” Then she will study what I’ve written because she actually wants to learn – unlike with me and computers. I write work and personal emails. I call doctors’ offices and her insurance company. And I don’t really mind. The only thing is, I am not a morning person. In fact, I didn’t realize the extent of this until a roommate told me that my previous roommate had given her this message, “The only thing you need to know about living with Jennifer is that she’s not a morning person.”
I was a little surprised, and mumbled a “…wha…? Am I really grumpy?” And she said no, that she was just told not to be really loud and in my face in the morning. And yes, yes I would hate this indeed. And actually, I estimate it takes me about three hours once I get to work to actually wake up. During those three hours I may look half awake, but I am actually mostly asleep.
But my coworker is a morning person, in fact, she gets here an hour before I do, and is all warmed up with her emails and ready to go when I walk in the door. So before I even get to my desk, she has run up to me and said, “Jennifer? Can you help me?” And then she will explain a very convoluted story involving several families on vacation together, and how one family only stayed one night, and one family has twice as many kids, and one has no kids, and this one already bought all the food, and this one paid so much money to this other family, and this one spent some money on everyone else in this other way, and pretty soon my brain tunes it out and drifts to whatever it does – probably my bed at home – until I hear, “Can you write for me?” And then I have to make her explain it again, and once I finally get the story straight, and write the letter, she will pull out another piece of paper with some notes for another problem, and can’t she just see that I am trying to nap here??

So today when I came in she was working on a multi-family trip to Washington, D.C., and I actually had work that needed immediate doing. So while I was trying to hold several places in various notebooks, while making calculations, and doing a little computering as well, she approached me and laid a couple of pieces of paper down on top of my work. They contained a list of attractions she found on-line, and she was asking me about each of them, and wanted to know where else she could go, how many she could see in one day, etc. And I, as usual, was very groggy. One of the sites she had found was the Korean War Memorial. “There was war in Korea? When?” “um, 1950’s? After WWII, before Vietnam…” was my less than stellar answer. Her reply: “Vietnam?! There war in Vietnam?! What for? Why there war in Vietnam and Korea? What happened?”
Me: “um… there were wars there…. and the U.S. was involved.” The end.
I am not proud, but have I mentioned that I was already trying to sleep and work at the same time? Making sense of two wars to someone who has never heard of them was too much to ask of my brain. It might have exploded.

So, to my friend Kat, who just a few days ago said that I would make a good teacher, I’d like to know what she thinks now.

Yes, this is an exciting story from my daily life, I know. I have thought of other things to write about lately, but either they are more personal than I want to divulge, or I get distracted and forget about them. I noticed on the same site that was offering the blog makeover that last year on Valentine’s day it was encouraged for readers to share their worst date stories. I like it. Maybe I will do that this year. Or maybe someone else can? Blay?