Silly Things I Do

When I was in elementary school, I had a classmate who was rather forgetful. “If your head wasn’t attached so firmly to your body, you’d forget it at home, too”, the teacher used to say. The same teacher used to send me to the lavatory soon after my arrival, right after he asked: “So did you have chocolate milk again this morning?” . Meaning I had forgotten – or simply not cared about - wiping my mouth off.

Many years have passed since then, yet I have never quite mastered the art of getting chocolate milk off my face. I have also reached levels of forgetfulness that my previously mentioned classmate could only dream of.

Often I kind of envision myself as a nutty distracted cartoon professor figure. This image of myself is probably entirely in my head, since to unsuspecting onlookers I am by
far not nearly enough into science, too young, the wrong gender, and haven’t really had any instances of having my hair stand up after electrocution. This is not because I haven’t been electrocuted, mind you – I have been at least twice. It has more to do with my hair being long and not really prone to stand up straight, electrocuted or not.

Yesterday wasn’t really a case of forgetfulness in the strict sense of the word – fortunately, or I’d have to explain why I had forgotten my security pass for the third time.
No, I went to work quite normally, yet in the car I noticed something was off. My jacket felt kind of weird on my arms while turning the steering wheel. Then, of course, I noticed it wasn’t my jacket at all. I had gone out in my boyfriend’s jacket. Now in my defense – they’re both black, the same material and apparently a similar size. The latter being mostly because I wear my clothes quite tightly, because in size I’m somewhat taller and quite a bit broader than my beloved. Fortunately, however, I didn’t tear the bloody thing and was able to return it safely to its owner.

And I live to be a moron for another day.

Yikes, I have a job

My absence can be explained by one simple thing: I have been busy. One of the reasons for my lack of free time is that I now have a job, albeit a part-time one. I can now in all honesty say I’m no longer a jobless bum. It’s funny how it came to be, really. I had kind of set my limit for job hunting for 3 months. Reasons being that a) lack of cash is bad for my spending habits and b) doing nothing is bad for my morale. Since I haven’t found what I have been looking for, I just took something that came along (read: something that apparently no-one else wanted to do and yours truly agreed to).

I now work as an administrative monkey for a company that shall remain unnamed, who in their turn work for Bayer – that would be the people who brought you Aspirin.

The job is in the Harbour of Antwerp; I can actually see ships coming in from where I work. I can also see a nuclear plant, so if that blows, well, I’m rather screwed. (Just a side thought: is it just me or does it seem to be a BAD idea to have a nuclear plant right next to your most important river? If there is waste, or an accident, the river can carry it all the way to the sea.)

Anyway, I basically work in a container on a construction site. Occasionally it smells quite badly there. Bonus: I get extra cash for working in a “hazardous environment”. I think I should have gotten a helmet. Not that I really need one, it would just have looked cool. I did get to see their fabulous *cough* security video and now have a super-duper security badge. Yes, I’m all responsible now. Apparently you need to keep your car away from the huge tubes all over the site, because they can leak hazardous materials – like acid. A car is rather required, since there is no public transport available for several kilometers around there. And I don’t want an acid hole in my cute baby car.

Oh, another thing. As far as I know I’m the only female in the company, except for the cleaning lady. Yes, apparently it’s so bad that while signing one of my contracts I saw it said “Mr.”, not “Miss”. Furthermore there is no women’s loo. So every day is an adventure really: will I startle the shit out of peeing men, or won’t I? I have of course found the obligatory collection of naked titties posters. It wasn’t really hard to find – they’re displayed in the canteen. (So apparently food and sex do go together.)

While telling this to friends, I’ve had several people tell me I should sue them for this. Apparently, women have sued companied for less. However I’m not inclined to do so because a) I actually like my co-workers b) they pay me well for the dumb monkey-job I do and c) I find it F***ING HILARIOUS. So I’ll just not sue, and keep you posted. Thank the Gods I’m not American…