savior of all womankind

so, big surprise, i've been working a lot.
a few weeks ago i started picking up the occasional night shift along with my usual day shifts, which significantly upped my workaholic factor. i took it up a few notches more last week when i worked a shaping shift (12-7) followed by night organics (7:30-3), and after a brief pause for not enough sleep, a return to work for a shaping shift the following day (12-7). twenty-two hours of work in a thiry-one hour period. some people do this all the time, i remind myself. (and those people are crazy!) during the last leg of this labor marathon, feeling ghostly and overcaffeinated, i was seriously questioning my judgement. until my supervisor made the comment of the month.

upon realizing that i was working my third shift in less than a day and a half, my shift supervisor turned to the production manager and spoke as if continuing a long-running conversation:
"and that's why women deserve the same rights as a man, because they work like a man."
in the space of a sentence, i went from overworked pushover to savior of all womankind. yes, my ghostly, overcaffeinated visage glowed with pride. i also found it humorously telling that women's rights had definitely been up for debate UNTIL i worked 3 shifts in 31 hours. so, in classic fashion, i calmly accepted the noon-to-three-a.m. double i worked yesterday without comment. like the overworked pushover i really am.


as for agreeing to work on my day off tomorrow, i had less noble motivations: a trade for leaving work early on sunday to see LADY SOVEREIGN AND JEAN GRAE IN CENTRAL PARK FOR FREE! yes.

i came home last night triumphant: i had managed to arrive safely, drunk but not wasted, high thanks to the generosity of strangers, deliciously exhausted, and best of all, alone. the evening had commenced with a perfectly executed social dinner with erin's parents, visiting from phoenix. ethan, erin, and i were charming, funny, and clever, ducking out at just the right time to have some of our own fun at the metropolitan. the bar was predictably full of pitfalls and opportunities: exes, hotties, old friends, awkward acquaintances, lurking drama. the evening progressed. i soon found myself friendless at a williamsburg bar thanks to a classic one-two bootycall punch, and having spurned my own such opportunity, i struck up conversation with strangers. soon i was in the passenger seat of a car headed down the BQE, a girl i didn't know behind the wheel, a guy i didn't know rolling a fat j in the back seat. graciously dropped off outside my door, i dodged the last obstacle of the evening, my new gentleman acquaintance's expert attempt to get in my pants. i confidently rejected him. i felt all the more accomplished because he was very attractive and i was tempted. unlocking the door of my apartment, i felt as though i had beaten the high score on some sort of urban nightlife videogame. one might typically imgaine that the goal of such a game would be to score the hookup, not reject it (twice in one night, even!), but that was precisely my triumph. nothing could have capped my night better than to fall asleep looking forward to a day without work, an opportunity to sleep in, hours and hours without obligations, and not even an overnight guest to distract me.

warning: explicit descriptions of heat and sweat

some of you, i know, may have been experiencing a bit of unpleasantly humid weather lately. i offer to you one consolation: you can be thankful that you don't have my job.

imagine a large room, lacking windows and having only one outside door. imagine that in this room are three--yes, three--huge ovens, each large enough to pass for a new york apartment bedroom (or a walk-in closet, at the very least). imagine that each of these ovens is heated to a steady 475-degree burn, shooting jets of steam every few minutes. actually, do your best just to imagine what 475 would feel like. now imagine that your job is to fill the ovens with soft, sticky dough, as quickly as possible, for hours on end. when the dough becomes bread, you empty the oven, and when the oven is empty, you reach your arms deep inside the belly of the beast to sweep its scalding ceramic floor with a long, unwieldy metal-handled broom, filling the impossibly humid, 475-degree air with clouds of black soot. and imagine that, while you're doing all of this, as quickly as possible, you're wearing (along with the usual shoes, socks, underwear, t-shirt, apron, hat, etc.) long pants made of roughly the same material that a flame-retardant acrylic tarp might be. what you're imagining is my life.

it's always hot in the bakery, and it's been really hot for a few months, but today's heat was an unparalleled endurance challenge. perpsiration welled from every surface of my body. while i was loading bread, i had to angle my head so that sweat didn't drip from my face onto the dough. every article of clothing i wore, including my apron, was completely, totally, thoroughly sweatsoaked. except for my pants, of course, which were mostly just sweat-coated. my eyes burned as they filled with warm salty liquid: nope, not tears! best of all, though, was the phenomenon visible on my arms. flying clouds of soot, ambient flour, and prodigious perspiration had joined forces to form a quarter-inch thick layer of the dough from hell from wrist to elbow. i also came home with several burns, as a half-second's contact was all the oven door needed to scar my warm, moist skin. my lungs also hurt. i tried not to breathe the air, i tried to wear a surgical mask, but my efforts were thwarted within minutes: ever tried breathing through hot, wet fabric strapped to your face with elastic? don't get me wrong, though: i love my job.

don't marry a douchebag

next week i'm going to a family reunion (of sorts) in indiana, which got me thinking about the people my cousins are dating, and inspired me to make up a half-song. it's in a country style, and called "don't marry a douchebag". it goes a little something like this:

if you're going to get married
as some people tend to do
do us all a favor
and start dating someone new
sure, he was the cutest
on your high school's wrestling team
but all your family hates him
'cause he's boring and he's mean.

don't marry a douchebag
don't marry a douchebag
don't marry a douchebag

we know your girlfriend's pretty
and she prob'ly gives good head
but don't buy that girl a diamond
just because her hair is red
yeah, you're from a small town
don't have many redheads there
but wed that lying cheating shrew
and you won't have a prayer.

don't marry a douchebag
don't marry a douchebag
don't marry a douchebag


please note that while this song was inspired by reality, no people or situations mentioned therein are intended to remsemble any real person, living or dead. it's just a country song.

however, if any of my cousins are by some miracle of the internet reading this post, consider that it might still be a good idead to think twice before you tie the knot. really. please.

an amazing thing happened just now.
i was taking a long walk home. it is a beautiful spring day in new york, the sky an unbroken blue, the weather so perfectly temperate that it feels like nothing, just sun and air. i watched the park slope of babies, bikes, and white people become the neighborhood where i live as i walked south on fifth avenue. bass beats heard from open car windows, delivery boys on beat-up mountain bikes, moustaches worn without irony, a dollar store, then another, doors open wide to the spring air spilling colorful goods of questionable quality into the street. billboards in spanish, bus stop ads in spanish, street signs in stubborn english generously tagged "flaco love psb crew". and here's the amazing thing: i felt nothing. i felt an unbroken, unthinking calm. i felt comfort, but not an active comfort: the comfort of unity, of the self; peaceful. noventa y tres punto uno AMOR played from a store and i knew the song. i knew it really well. hearing it was like breathing, and when i heard it, i heard music. i didn't hear spanish music. and this is what i'm trying to say: the amazing thing that happened just now is that i walked through my neighborhood completely free of fear. maybe it's because it's a beautiful day, maybe it's because i'm so tired i feel like my legs might fall off, probably it's just because i work full time in a place where i am the only english-speaking female. i walked through my neighborhood and didn't feel like an outsider. and it was the first time.

reposted from an entry written April 2, 2006

the struggle of the (voluntary) proletariat

for the past day or so, i've been having a mini-crisis of personal self-doubt. i guess you could say its early stages actually began two weeks ago, when i received my first paycheck from work. it was a beautiful day, and one that i had been looking forward to for a while. but then i opened my check... and it wasn't that i was no longer happy, or pleased, but i was certainly shocked at what i saw. or didn't see. over two-hundred dollars gone, flushed down the toilet of social security or sent to fund the signing bonus that convinced my cousin to join the national guard. oh well, that's life. then i had to buy gas in the city for the first time, and take a cab because i missed my train, and get groceries somewhere other than the park slope food co-op. and hey, that's still life.

tuesday, at work, the crisis began to take shape. i was working in the shaping room, one wall of which is a large plate-glass window facing out into the chelsea market. people frequently stop by the window to watch us, gawk, point, stare, and take pictures. basically, it's a baking zoo. this seems particularly true about once every two weeks, when a herd of children comes through the bakery on a school field trip. this was the case on tuesday. as the children watched us work in wide-eyed wonder, my co-worker saul (pronounced with two syllables, sa-ool) said with a laugh (in spanish), "those kids are seeing where they'll have to work if they don't study." i said something to the effect of "i studied, and i still work here." he then referenced one of our few american-born co-workers, who may indeed work at amy's because he didn't study, by way of explanation. i felt a pang of self-deprecation, but didn't let it get to me.

but then i went to erin's art opening the same night, and the mini-crisis began. i walked up the steps into cooper union, pushing my way through a laughably large crowd of smoking youths in fashionable attire. it brought to mind idle chat i've heard or had in the past, particularly in ann arbor, about "art students" or "hipsters". oh, we thought we knew. well, imagine ann arbor's artiest art student, its hippest hipster. take that person, and envision the person they might aspire to be. now, take that person, multiply him/her/zie by roughly 25, give each of these art stars a cigarette, and you've roughly approximated the crowd on the steps of cooper. anyway, that's not important. just a bit of stage-setting. more followed in the same vein when i arrived inside. what really got to me were a pair of conversations i had as the evening progressed. each conversation was with an intelligent, attractive, interesting human being on the trajectory towards being my friend. i like these people. maybe that's the hard part.

the individuals, and the conversations, were as follows:

person 1: parsons graduate, illustration major. incredibly smart. unemployed, then saw a job posted on myspace. applied for the job even though it was not in person 1's chosen field; by way of tweaked resume and "bullshitting", got the job. consequently works as a graphic designer for two high-profile national fashion catalogues. not a full-time job, but "pays the bills".

person 2: parsons graduate, illustration major. went to art school in new york after several years on the road with national touring bands, playing sxsw and warped tour, bedding groupies, doing drugs, getting kicked out of bars, and generally living a life of indie rock demi-fame. quit the band when they signed to interscope. currently "pays the bills" working freelance illustration jobs, definitely nothing close to full time. quote: "i can't imagine working five days a week."

in short, i spent the evening feeling like the worst kind of sucker. not only do i work five days a week, but this week i worked six. my job requires me to wake up by 6:00 am. every day at work involves hard physical labor: at the end of the day i am sweaty, i am hot, my muscles are sore, my clothes are filthy, my face is grimy, my hands are calloused and black with soot. no one knows my name, no one knows my work, i have no groupies. (not that i really want groupies...) and apparently, the cumulative total of my pay for the month is less than these people make working a few days a week at home or in a plush office. on top of that, both person 1 and person 2 have enough time and money to go out several nights a week, and among other things, enough money to buy drugs, the *ahem* expensive kind.

i truly like my job. i like my life. i am happy, i am lucky, i have everything i need and i am thankful. i am not going to make any drastic changes anytime soon. but i still feel like a sucker.

time for sleep

"i slept ten hours last night."
on this unusual day at the bakery, with two women working the same shift, he had an attentive audience.
"mmm, nice, you must feel very rested..." we clucked our absent appreciation, turned our heads, smiled.
he continued to churn out baguettes. i noted the shaggy stubble on his wide, boyish face. it looked as if he hadn't shaved for a week. i knew from personal observance that it had been at least two. at this point it was becoming a game i played with myself, each day anticipating the shave that never came.
"last year, this time, i always sleep ten hours. almost every night, twelve." his voice, with its odd, high pitch, still managed to suggest a triumphant air.
conversation skipped a half-second beat.
"tweleve hours?"
he sighed, "twelve hours." wistfully triumphant.
"that's a lot of sleep--yeah, too much!"
"no, no, is good..."
he paused from his baguette and tossed some flour on the shaping table.
"look, you work eight hours." with his index finger he drew "8" in the flour.
"then, you sleep maybe seven hours..." beneath the "8", "7". he did some quick math.
"that is fifteen hours. a day, twenty-four." he drew "15" in the flour, circled it. "what you do with the extra time?"
"but...!" dumbfounded, we made only sounds.
"you play a sport?" he looked at me. was this a rhetorical question?
"um, well..."
"okay, a sport, that is half an hour. nothing. still too much time. what you do with it?"
i began to cry out spanish verbs in protest. "disfrutarse! hablar con amigos! comer! cocinar! leer!"
"no!" his voice was soft as always, but firm. "you think!"
she laughed from across the table, "men and women, we very different. men just sit, lazy. women have things to do."
"yeah, yeah, limpiar! mucho tiempo por limpiar!"
he shook his head, not buying it. his dark eyes, deep-set with long lashes, fixed blankly on the table where he shaped another baguette.
"too much time, all you do is think. and that's no good. when you sleep, you no think."
he tossed a finished baguette into a growing pile. we shaped the rest of the dough in silence.

next time, check the parking brake

yesterday before work i needed to repark my car, as it was parked on a street that is cleaned on wednesday. i noticed with some small irritation that over the course of the past week, i had been parked in very closely by both the car in front of and behind mine on the street. in fact, it appeared as though the large red van behind me might actually be touching my car. since the three inches between my car and the car in front were all i had to work with, i moved my car forward slowly... and felt a heavy thunk. from behind. there was now no question that the scary red van was touching my car. with some disbelief, i backed my car up very slowly, and sure enough, i was able to push the van backwards. my mind was a nervous volley of thoughts. pressure: if i don't move my car, NOW, i am either going to be late for work or going to get a parking ticket. disbelief: is the van behind me really parked in neutral? relief: looks like it's going to be easier to get out of this space than i thought! terror: a large, freely-rolling van is resting against the back of my car. excitement: this is crazy! i didn't really think about it, i just did what i had to do and pulled out of the parking space and began to drive down the street. to my utter shock and horror, the van, moving at a slow but steady roll, pulled out of the parking space in into the street behind me. its wheels had been, amazingly, at such an angle that the van actually turned out of the space but straightened out upon entering the street. for a moment i wondered if i was imaginging the whole thing, and perhaps had neglected to notice the van's driver. i looked back to check. no question about it, the van now following me down the street had no driver. it was terrifying but also strangely hilarious. in a guilty, giggly panic, i hurriedly turned right at the next street. i looked back to see the van, steadily rolling and still unmanned, move at what was now a moderate driving speed through the intersection and on down the street. i wanted to yell, "stop, you stupid van! where do you think you're going?" but obviously, the van did not have an intelligence of its own. recalling newton's first law, i can only assume it continued roll along the street (which runs downhill until it ends, by my estimate) until a more massive object crossed its path. i circled around the block, feeling guilty but also trying to find a parking spot. two old men who'd seen the whole thing were standing on the sidewalk, jaws agape, pointing at the road. i saw no sign of the van (or of any wreckage, for that matter). oops!