Cruisin’

April 4, 2012 / Diane Henders / 24 Comments

On Monday, I thoroughly enjoyed an experience most people would appreciate just about as much as a root canal without anaesthetic. I drove 800 miles across the Canadian prairies in 12 hours, stopping at hours 5 and 10 to fill the car’s tank and empty mine. I’ve been making that trip pretty frequently lately, but I’m still not tired of it.

There are many things I love about driving across the prairies alone. Not the least of these is the opportunity to sing along with my music at the top of my lungs without losing friends and/or straining my husband’s tolerance to its limits.

Auditory abuse aside, a drive across the prairies in good weather is about as close to heaven as I expect to come. I love the places where there’s nothing to see but a long, straight ribbon of highway that vanishes into the big blue sky with no visible human habitation in any direction. And I love the variety in the rest of the drive: sloughs and open fields and occasional clumps of trees; isolated farmsteads and little towns; foxes and coyotes and deer and antelope and (once in a blue moon) a moose; hawks and waterfowl and songbirds and all kinds of other critters.

There’s room to breathe out there. When I get out of the city and into the open prairie, my joints loosen and my muscles relax and my soul heaves a sigh of relief and soars up to meet that blue, blue sky.

Mind you, I’m a freak.

Most people consider a drive across the prairies about as stimulating as watching paint dry. Beige paint. They’re delighted when they finally arrive at civilization.

I consider civilization an annoying but necessary hiatus in the pleasure of my drive. To wit:

At the first gas station, I waited approximately forever outside the women’s washroom, only to find that the kid who was using it was taking so long because she was industriously clogging the toilet with paper towels and who knows what else.

If I’d known, I could’ve gone straight to the men’s in the first place. And don’t get me started about men’s washrooms.

At the second gas station/sub shop, I arrived exactly in time to:

Have a guy slip in front of me to pay for his gas, only to engage the clerk in a lengthy conversation about “Where’s the best place to eat in Virden?” Not satisfied with the clerk’s initial answer, he diverged into, “But what if I want Chinese food? But what if I want ribs? But what if I want…” You want to live, buddy? Get outta my way.
This delayed me enough to…
Have a woman slip in front of me and slam the door to the women’s washroom in my face. Repeat the above waiting experience, this time with trepidation. Fortunately, the toilet was still functional by the time I took my turn.
However, this set up perfect timing to:
Have two women slip in front of me at the sub counter, only to order multiple subs. Each. With great indecision about toppings.

I’m not sure whether the drive helped or hindered my retention of equanimity. On one hand, I was happy and relaxed when I went in, so theoretically it should take longer for me to reach maximum annoyance. On the other hand, the normal vagaries of humanity seemed extra irritating after ten hours of solitary bliss.

What do you think?

Any other prairie lovers or long-distance drivers out there?

If You’re Reading This, I’m Not Dead

March 21, 2012 / Diane Henders / 21 Comments

Some time ago, I read an article on good blogging practices. It said you should designate a proxy blogger so someone could shut down your blog in case you died. It even suggested you should write a post and save it so your proxy could communicate your final message to your readers.

I’m sorry to say I didn’t treat this advice with due reverence.

I like to think I’m a conscientious person. I try to fulfill my social obligations, at least as much as someone with my limited social skills can manage. But I just can’t see writing a “Sorry, I’m Dead” post.

What if I’m not sorry? I mean, let’s face it, if I’m dead, I probably won’t care much about what’s happening with my blog. As I see it, there are three possibilities for my after-death experience:

1) Harps and heavenly bliss. In which case I’m more likely to look down from my exalted cloud and yell, “Neener, neener, I’m all happy and surrounded by endless beer while you poor schmos are still slogging it out down there!” I guess I could put that in a blog post, but it seems presumptuous. What if I jinxed it and ended up in the wrong place instead? Which leads me to option 2…

2) Pitchforks and eternal torment. If that’s the case, I’ll be so absorbed in my own misery that my blog will be the least of my worries. Or…

3) Nothing. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200; I’m gone, done, finito. Elvis has left the building, and he ain’t comin’ back. In which case, I won’t be capable of caring about my blog.

But still.

I’m conscientious. So now that I’ve been told this is one of my responsibilities as a blogger, I feel a niggling urge to address the “what if I die” scenario, even though I can’t imagine any earth-shattering consequences if I suddenly stop posting to my blog.

I mean, I’d like to think there are people out there hanging on my every word. Or… actually, no. Forget I said that. Considering the usual content of my blog, I’d find it very disturbing if people were hanging on my every word.

So how about this: As long as posts keep appearing here on a regular basis, you can assume I’m still alive, unless you believe in a fourth “beyond the grave” option where my spirit hangs around and writes blog posts and occasionally throws things.

Come to think of it, that could be fun. Though it would probably inhibit my ability to enjoy beer, so maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. No wonder ghosts throw things.

Anyway, if my blog posts stop, you can assume I’m dead, bored, or incapacitated in some way, so feel free to drop insulting comments on my last blog entry. If I’m bored, it’ll cheer me up. If I’m incapacitated, you can be assured that my revenge, while not swift, will probably be terrible, or at least terribly entertaining. For one of us.

And if I’m dead, I’ll probably be past caring, but it might amuse my ghost.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night…

February 22, 2012 / Diane Henders / 21 Comments

Well, not really. It was dark, but it was calm. Unlike me. I was scared shitless. I wouldn’t admit it, but I was pumping adrenaline and wondering if we were all going to live through this.

Dad was carrying the double-barrelled shotgun, my new boyfriend was in the middle, and I brought up the rear with a flashlight.

This is a true story.

It all started with the old barn on our farm. It was a creaky, drafty structure with missing boards and broken windows. There were still some bales in the hayloft, and as kids, we often played up there. We knew enough to avoid the rotten spots in the floor, and it was a private place where we could spend the afternoon with our Barbie dolls, or, more frequently in my case, shooting at bales with a bow and arrows.

It was great, except for the turds.

Big turds. Man-sized turds lying in the straw over in one corner. And there were flattened-down areas in the straw. We’d fluffed it up the last time we played there. We knew we hadn’t flattened it.

Sometimes when we played in the lower part of the barn, the loft creaked overhead with the rhythm of stealthy footsteps.

We never talked about it. Sometimes we stayed out of sheer bravado, hovering wide-eyed near the door for a quick escape if necessary. Sometimes we tacitly decided to play elsewhere. I never mentioned this to our parents because I refused to admit I was scared.

I’d always thought my nervousness around the barn was childhood foolishness until I brought my new boyfriend home from university years later.

It was a moonless night in October. The trees were bare skeletons and the yard was shrouded in the profound darkness and silence of a secluded prairie farm. Inside the farmhouse, it was warm and bright. I don’t remember how it came about, but Dad rose and loaded the shotgun.

We had a plan.

We would sneak up on the barn. Dad would be ready with the shotgun, my boyfriend would fling the barn door open, and I would flip the switch to turn on the three remaining light bulbs in the cavernous lower level.

We crept across the yard. Took up our silent positions outside the barn.

Dad gave the nod, swinging the shotgun up like the deadly trap-shooter he was. The door flew open with a bang. The lights flashed on…

And nothing was there.

I trembled my way back to the house, and the conversation remained subdued for the rest of the evening. My boyfriend showed a certain reluctance to visit after that.

I felt validated to think Dad shared my suspicions about the barn, but I don’t know whether he actually expected to have to use the shotgun, or if it was just a convenient way to keep an upstart boyfriend in line.

I never asked him. And he never told.

Brainless

November 16, 2011 / Diane Henders / 23 Comments

I just got back from two weeks in Manitoba. I have 682 unread emails, and there’s a stack of as-yet-unidentified but vaguely frightening papers and envelopes in my “In” tray. It’s Wednesday morning, time for a blog post. I’m brainless.

I pre-planned carefully for exactly this situation. I have 38 half-written blog posts in my “Blog” folder, ready for the day that I can’t think about anything to write. Just like a boxed meal in the freezer, all I have to do is take one out, add some seasoning, and serve it up.

I’ve tried three different ones so far. They’re all flat, boring, and tasteless. And that’s “tasteless” in the sense of “bland and flavourless”, not “rude and potentially offensive” (which can actually turn out to be fairly entertaining on occasion). Apparently those posts were not only half-written, they were half-baked.

I feel the same as I did at three A.M. the day I was planning to begin my fourteen hour drive home. “Thump-bang-bang” woke me. This is not a happy sound at three o’clock in the morning.

I got up to discover that the pulley from the furnace blower motor had flung itself off its shaft and was lying uselessly in the bottom of the furnace. I spent a good half-hour trying to reinstall the pulley in my semi-conscious stupor before I realized that it was just around zero outside, there were electric baseboard heaters in the rest of the house, and we were highly unlikely to freeze to death if the furnace didn’t run for a few hours.

The pathetic part of all this is that there’s only one way to put the pulley back on the shaft. It’s not like you can do it wrong. I tried over and over. The same way. The same result. It wouldn’t go back on.

Hands covered with black grease, mind circling as uselessly as the remaining pulley on the now-disconnected drive motor, I stumbled into the bathroom to wash up and fell back into bed, realizing as I shivered under the covers that it probably would have been smart to put on slippers and something warmer than a thin robe before attempting repairs in the middle of the night.

The next morning, the problem was miraculously simplified when I looked at the furnace again and realized that both the driveshaft and the pulley had been gouged when the pulley twisted off, leaving a slight burr on both. A few minutes work with a metal file solved the problem. Amazing what a few hours of sleep and a modicum of alertness can do.

I’m hoping to regain a useful level of alertness soon, and maybe the judicious application of some honing and smoothing tools will fix up those blog-posts-in-waiting. I’ve also resolved to get a few of them completely written, once I get my brain safely reinstalled on its driveshaft.

Meanwhile, anybody got a brain file? Apparently I’ve got a nasty burr somewhere…

P.S. Many thanks to all who offered encouragement to my step-mom. Her first treatment went very well, and she wants me to thank everyone for their good wishes.

Ooooo, Scary!

November 2, 2011 / Diane Henders / 8 Comments

Since Halloween was this week, “scary” has been on my mind. It was definitely on my mind when I looked in the mirror this morning, but that’s another story.

“Scary” is such a versatile word. Halloween costumes are good-scary. Haunted houses and ghost stories are creepy-good-scary. Politicians are scary in a stomach-churning, “eeeuw-I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it” way.

There’s exciting-scary, when you’re hurtling down a black-diamond ski run and you catch an edge and almost lose it but you don’t, and the adrenaline slams into your veins and you let out a whoop and haul ass to the bottom grinning like a maniac.

There’s the detached sort of scary you get when you’re airborne immediately after parting company with your dirt bike or slipping on the stairs. It’s that short moment that takes approximately forever to experience, and your brain has exactly enough time to say in calm and reasonable tones, “Oh, shit, this is really going to hurt!”

And then there’s scary-scary. The kind of scary that makes your heart pound and your hands sweat. The kind of scary that makes you drop your shoulder like a defensive tackle and fling little old ladies in all directions as you bull your way through the lineup to get to the toilet before you shit your pants.

Well, maybe not really. And anyway, that only happened once. Don’t bug me.

My point is, even though “scary” is technically defined as a bad thing, we search it out in so many ways. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be something scary for Halloween. Some people would argue that I achieved “scary” on a regular basis, but they may be exaggerating. Though I do have a vivid memory of my mother saying, “Try not to be so… ferocious.” It wasn’t even Halloween.

But I never wanted to be a clown or a princess or a ballerina. I wanted to be a pirate, a headless person, or some other horrifying apparition. I wanted to make people shiver in abject terror. Note the clenched fist and fearsome grimace. I was seven at the time, and my sword was tinfoil-covered cardboard. I wanted a bigger, scarier sword, but cardboard wasn’t to be wasted and tinfoil was expensive.

When I got old enough to understand real fear, “scary” lost some of its attraction. But still, in fiction and movies, we have to have a dose of scary, or the storyline just seems flat. It makes me wonder if cave men sat around telling scary stories, too, or whether they had enough “scary” in their lives without making any up.

What is it about that burst of adrenaline? Maybe it’s the relief afterward. Maybe it’s the bragging rights when you’re sitting in the pub telling the story with a cold one in your hand, and your friends shiver and exclaim and laugh in all the right places.

I don’t know. All I know is, it’s my corporate yearend, and I have to wade through my financial records again. That’s a whole different kind of scary. And that story isn’t going to hold anybody enthralled at the pub, either.

P.S. I’ll be with my step-mom for the next week or two while she starts her chemo treatments, so I may be slow in responding to comments, and I might not make it around to comment on my favourite blogs. I’m still thinking of you, though. Thanks for visiting!

PANIC!! …Nah.

October 26, 2011 / Diane Henders / 19 Comments

It’s funny how the bloggers I follow seem to read each other’s minds. This past week, there have been all kinds of posts about stress, panic, and overwhelm. So what the hell, I’ll get in on it, too.

Panic is an interesting critter. It starts out as, “Oh, crap, I forgot the candles for hubby’s birthday cake”, and instantly morphs into, “Oh-my-God-I’m-such-a-loser-my-husband-will-divorce-me-my-friends-will-hate-me-I’ll-end-up-dying-broken-and-alone-in-a-rat-infested-cardboard-box-under-a-bridge”.

Whoa, say what? That’s good stuff. If I could pour that into an engine, I could blow the doors off some top-fuel dragsters. Zero to insanity in under a second.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not joking about real panic attacks*. But our everyday “panic situations”? Yeah, I’m joking about them. They’re an overrated pastime.

This was inspired by the “Everybody PANIC!” post over at Visiting Reality. Thanks, Linda!

And since Charles Gulotta over at Mostly Bright Ideas reminded me he wants another flow chart (and he just did a stressed-out post, too)… voilà: here’s another scary glimpse into the inner workings of my brain.

Charles, this one’s for you.

Is It Time To Panic Yet?

*If you’ve ever had a real panic attack, you know that on a 0 – 10 Funny Scale, panic attacks are about a -50. A word of advice from someone who’s been there: If you have panic attacks, find yourself a medical professional who specializes in cognitive therapy. You’re not crazy, you’re not a coward, and you’re not weak. Your brain just took a wrong turn down the logic-path and ended up in the “Oh-shit-I’m-about-to-be-eaten-by-something-big-with-sharp-teeth” parking lot. Trouble is, it gets in the habit of taking that shortcut, and the longer you let it do that, the longer it takes to break the habit. And yes, it is possible to stop having panic attacks, it just takes a while. Go take care of it. Soonest. Not kidding. Okay, I’m getting off my soapbox now.

I Feel So… Versatile!

September 28, 2011April 27, 2012 / Diane Henders / 28 Comments

Update #2: Thanks also to Chris9911 for another nomination on April 27/12. I never get tired of praise! And I will do another “7 things” post to catch up on my obligations – I promise.

Update: Thank you also to Let’s CUT the Crap! over at How The Cookie Crumbles for a second nomination on January 13/12, and to RVingGirl on January 18/12! I’m flattered, delighted, and… pushed for time, so it might be a while before I keep this circulating. Meanwhile, here’s the post from my first nomination.

Many thanks to Nancy over at notquiteold for nominating me for The Versatile Blogger award!

As she points out in this post, when you do the math, it becomes apparent that within a very few iterations of this award, theoretically everybody in the blogosphere could receive this award. Twice.

But I don’t care. I’m pumped that she liked my blog enough to nominate me.

The rules are that if you accept this award, you are committed to the following conditions:

Thank the person who shared the award with you by linking back to them in your post.
List 7 things about yourself.
Pass this award to 15 recently discovered blogs and let them know that you included them in your blog post.

Here goes:

In the category of “awards that sound more prestigious than they actually are”, I won a silver medal in the 2003 team archery event at the Multi-Sites Indoor Championship of the Americas (MICA). There weren’t a lot of participants, and the medal isn’t really silver. It’s not even silver-plated. But, hell, it’s in my drawer, and I’m proud of it. Shortly thereafter, I was sidelined with a wrist injury. It’s taken me a long time to get back into it, but I’m hoping to compete in some archery tournaments again this year.
The only food I don’t like is black liquorice. If I had to choose only one thing to consume for the rest of my life, it would be milk.
I’m a car nut. I love to watch drag racing, and I’m in the process of rebuilding a 1953 Chevy 210 sedan. The engine is done, but the body is waiting for a budget. Has been for years. Sigh.
In my rare moments of spare time, I paint in oils or play the piano, both of which I do with more enthusiasm than talent. Here’s one of my paintings:
My talent level is the same for both painting and piano: I’m exactly good enough to realize how bad I am when compared to a real artist/pianist. But hey, I have fun.
I have a helpless, uncontrollable addiction to gardening. I’m incapable of leaving a patch of dirt undisturbed. I grow and preserve my own fruit and vegetables, and I make hard cider from the apples from my backyard tree.
My MP3 player contains blues, rock, metal, country, barbershop quartets, classical voice and orchestra, Gregorian chants, folk, ragtime piano, reggae, jazz, and some stuff that I can’t even put a genre to. I love it all. The only music that makes me retch is the vapid, limp-wristed whining of 80s boy bands.
I have worn a dress or skirt about nine times in the last thirty years. Twice to get married (the first time didn’t take), once to my sister’s wedding, a couple of times to funerals, and a few times to black-tie parties. I enjoy dressing up approximately as much as I enjoy listening to 80s boy bands.

Regarding Condition #3: I follow tons of blogs, and my perennial favourites are in the blogroll at the right. Here are the ones I’ve discovered most recently. There aren’t fifteen in the list, but I’ve never been much good at obeying chain letter instructions.

Recipients, please treat this like the thinly-disguised chain letter it is. If you want to play along, great. If not, please accept my admiration for your writing, and ignore the conditions.

Here they are, in alphabetical order:

Big Ugly Man Doll – A fabulous males-eye view of marriage, parenting, and manhood. Don’t miss ManFAQ Fridays. And don’t drink hot beverages while reading (I learned that the hard way).

Carol Henders – Faith, inspiration, and recipes for yummy food. How can you go wrong? You wouldn’t believe it by our blogs, but we are actually sisters. Carol, feel free to not link back to me. You probably don’t want to do that to your readers.

De Libertas Quirkas – Since I’m a geek myself, I love Kavya’s engineering take on life.

Diana Murdock – Sometimes touching, sometimes raw, always thought-provoking.

Sierra Godfrey – A great sense of humour about writing and life in general. Don’t miss her Friday Google Reader Roundup. She also writes an excellent blog about design, communication, and usability here.

Me! Me! Me me me! – Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Aquatom! Poetry, musings, and days in the life of a superhero.

Murrmurrs – You never know what you’re going to get with Murr Brewster. From poop to politics, and everything in between (oh, wait, those aren’t actually that far removed), Murr says it loud and proud. Her blog subtitle says it all: “Snortworthy”. And you will. Oh, you will.

notquiteold– It doesn’t make a lot of sense to bounce this award back to the person who gave it to me, but I just discovered Nancy’s blog and I love it, so she’s going on the list. If you’re looking for an irreverent take on life from somebody who’s getting better with experience, don’t miss this one.

Visiting Reality – Funny double entendres… and a disturbing fixation on camels. Don’t miss Wednesday Hump Days. Hell, don’t miss any of it. Linda Grimes is a blast!

****************************

As I look at this list of blogs, it’s apparent that music isn’t the only field in which I have eclectic taste. Hope everyone finds something here to enjoy.

I’m A Hoer

September 14, 2011September 14, 2011 / Diane Henders / 19 Comments

I admit it. I’m a hoer. Now that the weather is beginning to cool off, I’ll soon pack it in for the winter, because it’s pretty much a fair-weather pastime for me. But most nice warm days in the summer, you can find me by the side of the road, waving at all the passing cars.

A few weeks ago, I even caused an accident because drivers were gawking at me. That’s no mean achievement, when you consider the fact that I was out in the middle of nowhere, and the average traffic load on that road is about one car an hour.

I’m talking, of course, about hoeing my garden. Wait, what were you thinking…?

And before you ask, no, I wasn’t wearing anything gawk-worthy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Dirty, baggy jeans and T-shirt, with a too-big long-sleeved shirt over top, along with my white Stetson (I’m from Calgary, I can get away with it) and a pair of geeky sunglasses.

I have a big vegetable garden by the side of the road at our acreage outside town. I don’t know what the protocol is these days, but when I grew up in the country, you waved to passing cars, whether you knew the driver or not. So I waved, as usual.

Apparently, the two drivers were lost, and the one in front decided to stop and ask for directions at the same time as the one behind turned to wave at me.

Seconds later, there was a crash, and then I was gawping like an idiot at the sight of two cars mashed together on an abandoned gravel road in the middle of nowhere. Pandemonium ensued as one of the passengers went into hysterics.

I’ve never actually witnessed hysterics in real life. If I get a Chrysler suppository or some other unpleasant shock, I’m more the ‘swear-loudly-and-hit-something’ type. So observing hysterics first-hand was… enlightening.

Fortunately, nobody was hurt, the drivers apparently remained friends, and the two cars limped off into the sunset. I think I heard one of the drivers mutter something about giving up and going home. I stood there, hoe in hand, feeling vaguely guilty about the whole thing.

I’ve heard that hoeing is a dangerous undertaking, and now I understand why. So if you happen to pass a badly-dressed middle-aged woman working in her garden in the country, please don’t be offended if I don’t wave.

Just throw money. I’m a hoer, after all.

Manitoba Chinese At The Paris

August 31, 2011October 2, 2018 / Diane Henders / 7 Comments

I’m posting this from Regina, Saskatchewan, partway through another 14-hour drive from Calgary to Manitoba. Being on the road again has made me think of the Paris Café in Gladstone, Manitoba. It’s been about 12 years since I visited the Paris, but the internet assures me it’s still in operation, so I plan to check it out again.

Gladstone, population 802 (don’t underestimate the importance of the 2), is a typical prairie town with a rail line through the middle of it. Most small prairie towns have a Chinese food joint, left over from the days when Chinese labourers pushed the railway across the prairies. Appropriately, the inexplicably-named Paris Café (Chinese and American cuisine) snuggles up to the railway track.

I don’t know exactly when the Paris was built, but I’m going guess it was around the early 1900s. There are only a few feet between the wall of the wooden building and the sides of passing trains, and the dishes rattle precariously on the shelves as the deafening rumble drowns out all conversation.

The most exciting feature of the Paris is the view. If you happen to be looking out the front window when the train is coming, you’d swear you’re about to be run down. The oncoming tracks are slightly curved, and the train looks like it’s bearing down directly on the building.

Another endearing feature of the Paris is that the entire building slopes noticeably toward the railway tracks. So much so, in fact, that when you’re sitting in one of the bench seats, you have to cram a sweater under one butt cheek so you’re not straining your back to stay vertical.

As you may know, I talk about my bathroom experiences frequently*, so I would be remiss if I didn’t describe the bathroom. It was clearly added some time after the building was built, but before the building code got too stringent.

Let’s just say it’s a little cramped. The door swings inward, so it’s an exercise in flexibility to get into the bathroom and shimmy around the edge of the door to close it behind you. There’s a large notch cut out of the edge of the door around hip-height, because that’s the only way the door could get by the sink. This leaves a significant hole in the door when it’s closed, but what the heck, it’s a small town. If you got caught peeking, you’d never live it down.

The toilet has been installed using as little space as physically possible. The edge of the seat is inches away from the wall. This makes it impossible to sit the usual way, so you have to perch side-saddle. It wouldn’t be so bad if the toilet seat was securely attached. I won’t tell you how I discovered that it wasn’t.

I promised I wouldn’t tell any gross stories this week, and I won’t. Last time I was there, the miniscule bathroom was scrupulously clean, and the food was good.

But the best part was the atmosphere.

Anybody else have a favourite small-town restaurant experience?

Gladstone’s mascot, Happy Rock. Get it?

*Hangin’ in the Men’s WC, Toilet Trepidation: Number One, Toilet Trepidation: Number Two

Confessions of an Undercounter Lurker

August 10, 2011August 10, 2011 / Diane Henders / 18 Comments

I’m an ice cream addict, and my nephew recently offered to let me hide under the Dairy Queen counter so he could feed me any treats he’d made wrong. Little did he know that lurking under counters is not a new activity for me. (And I didn’t enlighten him. There are some things a fifteen-year-old doesn’t need to know.)

If you’d told me twenty years ago that I’d spend a substantial amount of time on my knees under co-workers’ desks, I’d probably have slapped you. And a few years later, I’d have had to apologize. Because I ended up doing exactly that.

Wait a minute. If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, not exactly that. Jeez.

For a lot of years, the joke around the office was, “If you can’t find Diane, look under your desk”. I was working as a network administrator, and I spent far too much time hunched under desks, connecting and disconnecting various computer-related plugs and cables.

Aside from the carnivorous dust bunnies, I didn’t mind having to crawl around on the floor frequently. I hate dressing up, and it gave me an excuse to never wear a skirt to work (or any particularly nice clothes, for that matter).

And it was peaceful down there. Nice and dark and quiet. Sometimes it was tempting to just hole up for the day and spout incomprehensible technical jargon if challenged. Kind of like a deranged techno-troglodyte: “Back! Back, I say! Or I’ll ping your IP ‘til your CAT5 sizzles like an electrocuted snake! I’ll FDISK your drive ‘til it can’t find its FAT with both hands! RAM! FAP! Buwahahaha!”

I can’t understand why my coworkers always seemed… wary.

I’ve actually hidden under a desk to avoid people, too. I prefer to call it “a clever strategic decision”, not “cowardice”, but you can form your own judgement.

I was hiding from my ex-husband. Who had just encountered my brand-new boyfriend at the door to my house. There was a dog and a bag of cherries involved. Let’s just say it was complicated.

I couldn’t decide whether it would be worse to make an appearance and potentially exacerbate the situation, or to get caught huddling under my desk. How do you explain hiding like a kid, when you’re thirty-three years old? “Um, I just dropped something…” Ten minutes ago, when the doorbell rang for the first time. Yeah, right.

Anyway, I didn’t get caught, both the dog and the cherries ended up where they belonged, and both males departed unscathed, if not unruffled. I like to think I made the right decision on that one.

I’m going to skip the Dairy Queen gig, though. Wouldn’t want this undercounter thing to become a habit.

Any other lurkers out there?

Update:

As Charles points out in the comments, you can’t just leave a situation with an ex-husband, new boyfriend, a dog, and a bag of cherries without explanation. So go for it. Use your imagination, and drop your best explanation of “what *might* have been” in the comments below. I’ll pick a winner next Wednesday and send out a (probably not so) magnificent prize.