Singing the blues

I'm in a slump. Nothing BIG is wrong ... but everything small is. Everything! From the melon on my chicken and fruit salad (I HATE melons) to TCM wasting a day of Summer of the Stars on Johnny Weismuller.

Maybe I feel this way because of yesterday's full moon. Maybe it's that I'm deprived of precious alone time now that I share an office with three other people.

Whatever is causing it, I have been here before. I know I must not take it all too seriously because it'll pass. It will!

I think it started with some friction at work. The first incident left me feeling vulnerable and frustrated because it's one of those situations where I have responsibility and no authority. Then the second one was a run-in with my boss. He's very confidently going down the wrong path -- wrong for our client, but fun for us, the creatives. I guess my lack of enthusiasm registered on my face because he snarkily snapped, "You can make all the faces you want, but it's what we should be doing." I was very proud of how I responded with nothing but business-related reasons, when I wanted to say, "And you're only being so dismissive because you know I'm right." He told me the next day, "I know we both think we're right, but I'm not budging." I tried to get taken off the project, but no, I'm stuck doing something I don't believe in. So that's adding to my agita.


Then there was being disrupted as soon as I got out of the shower Thursday, frightened by an aggressive banging on my front door. I peered through he peephole and saw a man in a familiar deep blue uniform and a badge. What the fuck? Who's sick or dead? Who needs help?

The officer on the other side wanted to know about my across the hall neighbor, a man I have never seen. The officer wanted to know when/if I saw anyone come in or out. Because I remember all the drama and danger surrounding Crazy Old Neighbor, two years ago this time, I was eager to help. I told him the only person I remember coming to see my across-the hall-neighbor was a young woman who pounded on my door ("aggressively, like you did," I said) who wanted to know where he was, and where did he get his doormat. I told her, "You don't know how much I don't care about that doormat," I responded, annoyed, and she told me it had been hers in the home they shared and he stole it. I told the officer she walked off with it.

He asked me if she was Hispanic and I said I didn't know. "Who notices that sort of thing?" I asked. "She wasn't Swedish and she wasn't African-American, but beyond that, I don't know."

Then he asked me how long I lived here in town, checking out my attire (bathrobe, no makeup, bare feet) he wanted to know if I was getting ready for work, and did I work downtown. Hey ... These are not cop questions …

I answered some but not all and turned it back around to my neighbor. And the cop who, it dawned on me, never said he was a cop. And don't they usually go on calls like this in pairs? Where's his partner?

Turns out he is a cop but not on police business. He was acting as a village "task force process server," and was there to let my across-the-hall neighbor know he's being sued for child support. The other questions? He wants to go out with me because I'm "so funny." Really, he doesn't meet a lot of women who seem "as much fun" as me.

I was so mad! How dare he frighten me like that! And when I mentioned that I thought he was impersonating an officer to get a date, he smiled and said he never told me he was a cop. He gave me a piece of paper with his name on it (Derrick) and made me promise to call.

Oh well. I'm trying to find the pony in this shitty story, so I'm enjoying the fact that a (not unattractive) man will ask me out, even when I'm all fat and pimply and have no makeup on.