oh, ha ha ha

Yep, it’s another day at the Funhouse. K is out sick today, so it’s been even more entertaining than usual. And we got to start the day off with an 8:15 staff meeting, which is certainly just the way I like my days to begin. At least they started scheduling them for 8:15 and not 8:00 like they used to. So I can come flying in flinging coffee with my shoes still untied at the very last minute, instead of being verifiably late.

I do have to admit that this was probably the only staff meeting I’ve been to in all my nearly five years here than wasn’t a complete waste of time, though. Generally they are about when we are going to have the next staff potluck and when we’ll have the next staff luncheon and why can’t we all wear nametags so everyone will realize we’re the staff and not the students. This was a kind of odd staff meeting – a woman from the Diversity Office came and chatted to us about Diversity. I don’t know if there was a specific reason for this, but I DO know it was really weird timing considering the hot gossip I got yesterday. K came into my office, got out of the line of sight/hearing from the rest of the office, and said, “Do you know who C is dating???” (C being Dr. Airhead’s current graduate assistant)

I had no clue about who C is dating, so I admitted as much. Thinking, good god, who IS she dating?? An 85-year-old married professor? Brad Pitt?? The Dean???????

In hushed tones, K informed me that everyone is talking about the boy C is dating. Because he’s…….*gasp*……….. BLACK. The horror!!!! The whole office is abuzz, evidently. Of course being out of the loop in every possible way there IS to be out of the loop, I had no idea that we were having such a crisis. That one of our white grad students is, perish the thought, dating a black guy. Although I had in fact seen them walking together in the halls more than once, and he’s popped in here for a second a couple of times. What mostly registered with me was that he’s really tall. And she’s very short. But good god almighty.

And of COURSE I didn’t say what I WISH I’d had the nerve to say. Which would be something along the lines of that unless C is dating OJ Simpson, I can’t imagine why anyone CARES. Now I’m annoyed at myself for just saying very non-committally, “Is she? Oh, I’ve seen them in the halls together.” Now I’m mad at myself for being a non-confrontational wimp. As usual. This is the most conservative, right-wing, annoying office on earth, I think. Being in a college environment, I tend to forget what the staff is like. What the town is like, which is where most of the staff comes from. Rural, small-minded, conservative, religious, and BACKWARDS.

Anyhow, it was pretty funny that we had a diversity speaker in the staff meeting today. I’m sure that was just a coincidence, and K wasn’t here to hear it, and neither were three of the others. Not that it would help.

I’m actually quite surprised at K, too. Who I realize is very conservative, but honestly I really didn’t think she was that narrowminded. Or I thought that at least if she does believe a white girl dating a black guy is scandalous, she’d also keep it to herself. And I’m also astonished that she’d think I would find it horrifying. I’m horrified at THAT. I guess if I’m not going to come out and announce my liberal, openminded views to the masses I can’t whine about being mistaken for a CONSERVATIVE, but honestly, I can’t believe I could ever be mistaken for one of them.

Jeeze. Sometimes I forget where I live.

Well. I am manning the office alone today, as of course our new person isn’t here yet. And probably won’t be for ages, since the job was just posted this week. It’ll probably be a month before we get a real live person in here. There’s been a surprising amount of interest in this job. Someone in the Registrar’s office called to ask me about it today. And apparently people in the other side of our office are applying for it. One of them told K that she’d prayed about it and felt like God was telling her to apply for it. I told K that if God told her that, he’s obviously out to get her and if I were her I’d be questioning his motives on that one. K found that hilarious, and told B, who luckily found it hilarious too. See what kind of office this is? They all go to church and bible study and discuss whatever they’re praying about currently.

Tomorrow I’m off for Asheville yet again. My father seemed to be MUCH better this past weekend. He was using the oxygen very occasionally, and also ditched the walker he’d been maneuvering around the house with. I think he’d kept using that for fear of falling. He looked and sounded infinitely better. And is getting bored. My mother is still the Queen of No Short-Term Memory, though. It is both maddening and kind of funny. I got the mail from my aunt who died last summer’s mailbox while I was there, and she was going through it. She looked at several pieces, and said, “I don’t know why they keep putting Mabel’s mail in our box. Every bit of this mail has her box number on it!”

“That was in her box,” I said. “I just picked it up.” (While she was in the car WITH me, incidentally.)

“OH”, she says, and continues to look through it. Thirty seconds later:
“Every bit of this mail has Mabel’s box number on it! I don’t know why they keep putting it in our box!” And we went through this probably four times before she finally finished with the mail. Or before I went and took all the junk mail and tossed it and we put up the important stuff.

And today I was exchanging a number of emails with my sister-in-law, of the “what is WRONG with your MOTHER??” variety. She’s been getting really snippy to my father, and even accused him of taking her coffee mug this morning. She went so far as to pour what she thought was HIS coffee into another mug. That was very weird. And very unlike her. We speculated it may be stir-craziness, since neither of them have been out of the house since he came home from the hospital. Well, I took her to the store last weekend and I think the SIL has taken her to lunch a couple of times, but still. And my father is NOT the most tactful person in the world, and says things that annoy her. Especially about her failing memory. The SIL said she’s been perfectly fine when they went out, her usual good-natured self. Honestly, I’d be getting snippy too if I was housebound with my father for like three weeks solid. With ANYBODY.

SO, who knows. I wish the memory clinic could get her in sooner than August, though. We’re wondering if we ought to call her regular doctor and see what he thinks.

Okay, I have to get to work. I have to try and figure out the Insane Nonsensical Budget From Hell, that’s rearing its nasty head again. The Dean’s assistant, who is in charge of All Budgets, wants to get together with me and see where we stand with ours. Well, we stand on the edge of a crumbling cliff, frankly, and we’re already several thousand over budget and it’s only April, but at least it’s not like last year where I thought we were fine and we were like twenty thousand over. I think that’s what’s bringing this meeting on. She doesn’t want any more of THOSE surprises from Mathematically Challenged Woman. Although it really wasn’t MY fault. It was all the mystery things we’re suddenly being charged for that we weren’t in the past, or if we were, I didn’t know about it. So maybe this year it won’t be QUITE so bad, but now I’ve got to go try and figure this idiotic thing out.

And I also need to make more entries so that they don’t all end up being 500,000 words long when I finally do get around to doing one.