Get your pets spayed and neutered, people (redux)

I know I've blogged somewhere down there about The Price is Right, but here I am doing it again. Just bear with me. And if you're one of my co-workers, and you think this blog post is going to be about the time last week in Arizona when I had to go swimming with my boss in a pool owned by someone named Bob Barker (not the actual game show host) -- think again. I would never.

Nope. This blog post is about last Monday, when I took my first ever for realz sick day from work.

I know what you're thinking - you're thinking, but A.B., you've been working for a million years at so many jobs -- how can this be? But it's really true. All the jobs I had between undergrad round 1 and underground round 2 that afforded me sick days made it truly impossible to actually take them. They were the sorts of employment situations in which very few people could replace you, especially last-minute, and you were absolutely integral to things not falling to bits. It was Really Frowned Upon to call out, and generally so doing would mean begging a coworker to cover for you and then owing them tenfold in shifts later on. These were the sorts of jobs that on paper were forty hours per week but really ended up being sixty, and so time off was sacred. Calling in sick meant disrupting someone else's sacred time. It was a real problem.

And then when I was putting myself through college, I had two hourly jobs. Calling in sick would disrupt the very delicate balance of barely being out of debt and being in debt. It was all very complicated, and so I always went to work even when I felt like total ass.

Now, however, I have a real(ish) job with a lovely boss at which I am not expected to show up if I don't feel well unless something really and truly dire is going on. I had no idea what to make of this, and so Monday when I woke up after my Sunday evening "I'm in denial about my scratchy throat" South Philly water ice [look it up, non-Philly people] crawl and felt even worse, I definitely lay in bed for about an hour willing myself to get up and get in the shower and drag myself to my desk. I had the same debate an hour before about bagging on my morning run, but I felt certain that I would make it to my job. But at some point I surrendered, and left an all-too-long and over-explain-y voice mail for my boss, and then a worse one for the department administrator, about how awful I felt. And then I went back to sleep.

It was amazing.

Around 11 I woke up and really needed to watch an episode of The Price  is Right, like the good old days of middle school mornings spent home sick. I was hoping to turn up some 1980s episodes with Bob Barker, but the internet did not provide. Instead I watched a recent one on CBS with Drew Carey as host. I was pleased to find that he threw out the same Barker tagline at the end about spaying and neurering your pets, though it didn't have the same je-ne-sais-quoi that Bob's got. It's also worth pointing out that the Price is Right mystique that I recall from childhood - aka "How the hell do they know how much this shit is worth?!" was not solved by my graceful entry into legitimate adulthood. Put a six egg boiler or a steam shower or a speedboat or a vacation to Hawai'i or some Fiestaware in front of me, and I still can't tell you if it costs $5 or $5,000. They need some sort of secondhand store version of this show. At that I'd be a champion.

FWIW, I'm on the mend now. And that sick day sure helped. Thanks, my job.

Snow Day

First of all, let me just say: Philadelphia, you look ravishing in white.

Work is closed today.  I can't tell you how much love I have for snow days.  I loved them in middle school a lot because I got to sit at home and watch crap tv all day and this was about 1,000,000,000 x more awesome than middle school.  But the whole day was also spent dreading the next one, by which time all the snow would be cleared and I'd have to go back to school.  Now that I'm an adult and I love my job, snow days are even cooler.  Mother Nature calls a time out, and I get 24 hours to fuck around and watch movies and walk around the neighborhood in giant boots and pajamas.  And then everything is back to normal again the next day, and I just pick up where I'd left off.  No problem.

And now I am going to go finish reading Just Kids and find some Price is Right reruns on the internet.  Get your pets spayed and neutered, people.

If not for this ...

...then for what, I ask you, what is the internet for?  I have absolutely no idea what the first picture posted to the intertubes was, but I would bet that it was a cute cat picture.  Someone find this out for me, ok?

In any case, it's my cat's birthday today.  Specifically, she is turning fourteen, which is not a small number.  I have had her since before she was born - her momma, Porch (named for where she got knocked up), was a stray we took in back in 1996 - out popped one kitten.  A kitten who is now really old, with arthritis and heart problems and thyroid issues and the whole lot.  Sometimes when my mind wanders, I think about how much of my student loans from undergrad I could have paid back if I'd never gotten a cat.  But then she's just so adorable, it's hard to think that way.

In any case: now that she's 14 and totally legal to work, could one of you hire her, please?  I'm sick and tired of being the only breadwinner around here.  She's, um, homeschooled?  and ... can't lift forty pounds or more and definitely lacks opposable thumbs but is friendly, outgoing, and really good at killing mice (despite the arthritis).  Prefers to work from home, but will commute.  Any leads on this, please e-mail me.

Also: she will be getting tuna fish shaped like the number 14 on a plate later.  Just so you know.

Acknowledgements

So I've been reading a lot of dissertations lately - like you do, when you're trying to write one - and hands down the best part of any dissertation is the acknowledgements section.  It's like the gossip column / family tree of academia.  A real place for discoveries like, "oh, so you're not gay after all" or "I see that so-and-so helped you work through your argument in chapter four -- interesting."

Anyway, since it's pretty much the only part of my project that seems manageable right now, I've been giving mine some thought off and on today.  Non-human entities that are getting a shout-out will most definitely include Google Books.  Do you know how many times today alone I've read a footnote referencing an obscure, unpaginated [love that word] 19th-century journal and thought, where the hell am I going to find this RIGHT NOW on the day after Christmas so I can read it RIGHT THIS SECOND?  And then there it is, right there, on the interwebs.  I don't even have to put on non-pajamas-type clothes and venture out into the snow.  A real life-changing source for 19th-century nerds.

And speaking of snow, pleaseohpleaseohplease let tomorrow be a snow day, but only if I get paid on snow days.  It's really important that I sit at home and read again.  And build a snowman in my front yard.

Transcription:

It's weird.  Heartfelt, carefully-scripted, earnest, loving texts become this:

Verso of print, bottom center [sideways], in blue ink: To my love Hazel / on her birthday, July 6 [illegible] / love, love, love [cursive]