small tales, or, "there's really not a lot going on over here"

How a coworker got to know a little more about me this week:
(most of the folks I work with are permanent travelers, and work from home when they aren’t on the road. Which means they don’t get the privilege of seeing me in the office everyday, and knowing, say… how I eat.)

The setting: my apartment, 4:55 p.m. I had an afternoon dentist’s appointment which meant I got to work the rest of the day on my soda (yay!):

My personal cell phone (which I have been forced to forward my work calls to): ring ring!
Me: “Hello?”
Guy: “I’m sending you a bunch of emails with a bunch of work, blah, blah, blah. I just wanted to warn you they were coming, but don’t worry about it tonight, just call me first thing in the morning. Your mouth is probably all swollen, take the rest of the night off!”
(how does he know my mouth could be swollen? Because he had called me not long before as I was walking into the dentist’s office to get 2 fillings – even though I had just told him that I was about to be out of reach for that reason.)
Me: “Well, I won’t be taking the night off” (because I have 15 more just like you to work for), “but I’ll look it over and call you tomorrow.”
Guy: “Ok, go back to eating your salad now.”
Me: (thinking: oh – but I thought I was being so sneaky with my eating!) blabbing out loud: “uh…. I’m eating icecream.” (What was I supposed to do when he called, let it melt?!)
Guy: “Icecream?! Well I was way off… So, you came back from getting fillings, and started eating icecream?”
Me:” …uh…. yeah.”

So, you know how when you’re struggling to be on time to work in the morning and little things keep coming up to keep you from it? I had a different one this morning: I got stuck in a dress. You see, it’s suddenly spring-time warm, so I brought out a worky dress to wear I hadn’t put on since the fall. And I became completely trapped in it while trying to get it over my head.
Now, I know winter is the time to put on your extra padding to keep you warm or whatever, but this was ridiculous. My arms were stuck up by my ears, my dress all around my shoulders and chest. I couldn’t pull it down, and I couldn’t pull it back up over my head. And this went on for about 10 minutes. I mean, long enough that I had to start to wonder if I could get out of this mess by myself. It wasn’t helping that my more flexible arm, my left (I’ve heard we lose mobility in our right from repeated mouse use! I know I used to reach both behind my back equally, and now my right arm is woefully pathetic in reaching. Boo, work!) – anyway, my left has a bum finger from a kickball accident this weekend. It is purple, and refuses to completely straighten or curl, much less grip anything. And unfortunately, when I use other fingers, it hurts this one (the pointer finger – which it turns out you use quite a lot.) But the situation was desperate, so I was pulling and tugging and ow-ing all at once. Not very pretty. I started to wonder if I would have to call in sick to work (I couldn’t tell them that I was imprisoned by a piece of fabric. And if so, what lucky friend would I turn to ask to come over and cut this dress off of me? And most importantly of all, would my little trapped-by-my-ears arms allow me to put on pants before they got there?

And what kind of drastic action was this suggesting I take? I mean, I’m already in my second consecutive month of boot camp, what else can I do? Stop comfort eating? (I know – too drastic.)

After many sounds of ripping lining, I got it down and went to work – with visions of myself getting stuck once again trying to change out of it – only this time that would occur in the bathroom at work, where I change before boot camp. (Yes, I did think about what coworker I would call for help in an emergency.)

Update: I got the dress off no problem. I’m pretty sure I only had it half way unzipped the first time. I swear, I tried more unzipping in the morning with my little gimpy fingers, but I couldn’t get it to budge and assumed it was already all the way down.
Good one, Jenn.