Not having sick days is sick.

Being a permalancer is kind of like being an intern, but worse. None of my post-college employment opportunities has offered me benefits. No insurance. No 401(k). No moving assistance. No compensation for work-related expenses.* No such thing as a free lunch (or dinner, as Wink used to enjoy every Wednesday night).

But one thing my internships had going for them was I was paid by stipend. I could take a day off here and there to recuperate if I was physically sick or to return to the Great State of Minnesota if I was homesick.

Now I’m paid by the hour, and since I’m not the beneficiary of those glorious luxuries called Sick Days, if I’m near death and stay home I’m SOL. An evil pestilence took residence in my sinuses at the beginning of the last pay period, resulting in me having to take two days off of work… and I probably should have taken at least one more.

Those two missed days resulted in a $150 cut in my paycheck.

I’ve always thought it was kind of weird to get paid for not working, but the last time I had an hourly job (Duluth Omnimax Theatre circa 2004) I was able to switch or pick up shifts to make up hours. That’s pretty near impossible here. I could offer to work on the weekends, but it’s nowhere near as flexible as your average wage slave job. They already have weekend staff working on set schedules.

After a brief recovery at the end of last week, yesterday I picked up a hacking cough out of nowhere. This morning that cough has coupled with body aches to make me completely miserable. But instead of taking the day off to recuperate and thus reducing both the amount of time I’m sick and the likelihood that I’ll infect others in my work environment, I have to work to make bank.

So. Lame.

*Unless I’m driving somewhere for an assignment. Then my new job gives me 32 cents a mile or something. But I don’t get reimbursed for parking fees, nor did I get a reduced transit plan when trains were my transport mode of choice, something I’ve realized many other employers at big-girl jobs provide.

How to Obtain Severe Mortification

First, be on the phone with a source. Make that a very helpful, important source. Scatter a few coughs throughout the interview. Then, when he's telling you something very important, start coughing more... uncontrollably, in fact. That's good. Now try to tell him you're sorry and you've been very sick, but choke on the words instead. If you're doing this right a degree of panic will now be in his voice. He should offer to to call an ambulance for you. In a brief respite tell him you're... cough, cough... fine... cough, cough, cough. Then rasp, as creepily as possible, "Thank you for all your help."

Once you're off the phone, start coughing like you really mean it, to the point where you're gagging and very nearly throwing up. Make sure a single tear falls out of your left eye and dramatically down your cheek for effect. This fit should last a good five minutes, despite the water you're gulping and the cough drop you're furiously sucking on as if it were the sweet teat of life.

You should have brief spells of repose in between your coughs so your coworkers think they can finally get some work done now that The New Girl has finally shut up before you start up all over again. Get so worked up you're all sweaty and your face is the same color as your red sweater. If you're really enterprising, sprinkle some trumpeting nose blows in there. Good. Real good.

Pros and Cons: Being Sick

Con: I'm sick as a dowg.
Pro: I'm home, so I can profit from my parents' doting ministrations. My ma's been making me this excellent honey lemon tea. She also bought me jello and ice cream, which is pretty much all I ate when I had mono.

Pro: I no longer have a sore throat.
Con: Now I have a wracking cough and stuffed up nose, the consequences of which are the following: I must now breathe through my mouth, resulting in rancid breath, chapped lips, constant thirst and the inability to taste things.

Pro: Now that I'm back on insurance I was actually able to go to the doctor.
Con: He tested me for strep and mono, and when both came back negative he threw his hands in the air and yelled, "Now what?!? I don't know what you have and I DON'T CARE!"*

Con: I had to turn down an offer to go to the Cities and thus must suffer through another series of never-ending days to see my beloved.
Pro: Spent date night with the 'rents, going out to dinner and watching a movie. Their treat.

Pro: I stayed home from work on Thursday and caught up on a lot of reading and knitting.
Con: I had to go the whole day without a horsicle update and I was worried he'd croaked.
Pro: Went back to work yesterday and wrote our fourth update on the little guy. Local cover, bee-yotch. This critter's becoming my meal ticket.

*Slight dramatization

Horse-lovers heap hope on horsicle

When I was reporting the tale of a noble rancher determined to save a 9-month-old colt who had been left outside sans shelter in this weekend's frigid temperatures, I did so with a heavy dose of internal groaning at having been moved to the animal beat.

But, I tell yoo hwut, I could only be so lucky to have such an assignment. This story was plastered over a third of the front page and has been on our website's "most read" list all day long. People have called and emailed me asking where to send donations and extra blankets for the little guy. My managing editor approached me this afternoon to tell me the story had made her cry.

A woman calling herself a "faith healer who has been laying my hands on people for a long time" also called to offer her services to the horse. She described herself as a "child of God" who has visions and psychic powers. I called the rancher with tongue planted firmly in cheek to relay the offer, and by golly he's going to take her up on it.

I don't think I've ever had close to this much response on a story I've written. Now I'm itching to do the epitome of this kind of article: Singed Llama Carries Twin Babies on Back to Safety from Petting Zoo Blaze.

Can't "C" just be for Cookie?

Yesterday I was assigned an article about convicted child molesters. Today it’s a cold colt—a colt that was left outside in last Saturday’s freezing temperatures and is barely alive. But apparently it’s alive enough to warrant an article. I’ll be driving a total of an hour and 10 minutes to seek out the horsicle and describe its frigid environs.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m crazy about the equine race. Not so crazy about pedophiles, but hey, I’ll take it. I’m just worried about the precedence this seeming pattern of C-stories is setting.

Tomorrow could have me out in search of another brand of Crazy Creature. Or perhaps it’ll be a look at the in-Crease in Callouses in Cloquet or Carlton. Maybe it will be a story about the City’s Comptroller, a Crotchety mis-Creant who Created Craters of Credit Card debt.

The only “C” I want right now is the vitamin to cure my sore throat.

Things here are so dry...

... I'm going through a tube of Burt's Bees a week

... Walking over five feet of carpet to hug my mom goodnight transmits a lightening bolt's worth of electricity

... My throat is coated in sandpaper

... August's pre-storm sticky humidity is sounding mighty fine

... Looking people in the eye for long periods makes my eyes water and thus makes my editors think I fear them

... I had a dream last night I moisturized my face with margarine

No I can't.

This weekend one of the blogs I subscribe to posted a video of celebrities including will.i.am and ScarJo putting Barack Obama’s New Hampshire concession speech to music. It’s gone mega-viral, so I’m sure you’ve seen it already, but just in case: www.dipdive.com.

I’ve been oscillating between a handful of candidates for about a year now, but this film was so goshdarn inspiring it just about made me go out and tattoo “YES WE CAN!” on my forehead, chest, lower back and kneecaps.

But, as I often do with songs I like, I played it over and over. And over. And over over over. I have no media saturation to blame here. I did this to myself. Pieces of the song have been replaying themselves in my head for nearly a week now, and try as I might it just won’t stop.

I thought maybe watching the video again would satisfy my brain’s rabid need to hear those chords repeatedly. Wrong. I thought concentrating very hard on the song “New Soul,” which accompanies the new Mac ad, would lodge that in my brain instead. Wrong again.

I’m now at the point where hearing parts of the song in my mind’s ear makes me want to reject all semblances of change and just live the status quo under a rock until I die.

That was fast.

I was in the middle of some fast and furious data entry for another reporter’s story. I was in my flow, transferring data to its appropriate spreadsheet cell while rocking out to my pretty red mp3 player. “You know, self, I kind of enjoy mindless tasks every now and then,” I said to myself as my fingers CTRL+C and CTRL+V’d like nobody’s business.

Then, oh but then, my managing editor approached me to remind me that at that very moment I was supposed to be having my new-employee orientation with HR. I prefer those types of exercises the way I like eating a sloppy joe: quick and dirty.

Allow me to take this proclaim that unlike some lesser beings I actually respect the HR establishment. Though their mountains of forms are vast and mighty, my tenure in management at my college newspaper showed me your run-of-the-mill HR employee must on a daily basis deal with situations both singular and often disturbing with both finesse and a consummate professionalism.

So, though I by no means enjoyed being removed from my busywork, I was ready to fill out that paperwork legibly and completely, all the while with a smile on my face. And I did so, much faster than the suit from sales also going through the orientation, I might add.

I handed my sheaf off and beamed, ready to be pet on the head for a job well done. But no. It was not to be that easy, I’m afraid. I hadn’tThe first video was an excruciating, half-hour long segment from the public television show Almanac about the history of our fair paper, dating all the way back to the 1860s (before my town even had a city charter! Isn’t that neat??). This video has been so loved the tracking is off, making a wobbly, motion-sickness inducing image and sound similar to an orchestra trying to get in tune.

I learned the show was probably shot around 1995 when a former editor interviewed for it referenced the O.J. Simpson trial as the “biggest news event of our time.” I also learned that the paper unions stopped their monthly meeting short when word of the attack on Pearl Harbor arrived, that paper sellers used to be able to support their families on their salary, that people in the mid-90s suffered from outrageous perms and that people still read the newspaper after all these years (or at least did 15 years ago). I also learned that newspapers are “like the leaves of a tree,” but I don’t remember why.

As if that wasn’t torture enough, then we had to sit through a 10-minute video on how important our hands are. When the video was shot, I’m guessing late-80s here, people were just beginning to learn the negative effects of typing at a computer all day. I learned to put manila folders around my cubicle-sized monitor to block out glare and to put dishrags under my wrists to better support them. I also learned that my co-workers will just ignore me if I do a set of stretches that thrusts my bosom out. Good to know.

I try so, so hard not to hate HR. But you pushed me off the edge, HR Lady, when I came back to finish my task and saw the intern had gotten there first. That’s just not OK in my book.

No complaints here... yet.

You may have noticed I haven't been posting much lately (or maybe I'm just a huge egotist who thinks you would notice those kinds of things). Thing is, I can't find that much to get riled up about now that I'm back in my parental nest.

My parents and younger brother make pretty awesome roommates... especially given the fact that my mom now finances my life. But even if she didn't, I'd still have it pretty good here. For the first time in longer than I care to admit, I'm actually on speaking terms with everyone with whom I share a roof. And if my baby brother should happen to leave his underthings in the bathroom (or a surprise in the toilet) I can rail on him for it without fear of retaliation.

For someone who suffers from a severe case of Minnesota passive-aggressiveness, that feels pretty durn good.

I don't really have anything to complain about jobwise, either. My editor sits mere feet, not half a country, away from me, which precludes many of the frustrations I experienced in my previous position. And I feel more appreciated here, at a newsroom quite a bit smaller than my old one. Heck, I even had a story run above the fold on the cover in my first week, something that's only ever happened at my college paper.

So yah, aside from the frigid cold, the living's pretty good up here in da nord. I'm sure the honeymoon will end soon enough, though, so don't fret my pets.

Minnesota native moves home, lives in constant fear of frostbite

I'm kind of embarrassed by how wussy I've become in the frostbitten face of northern Minnesota weather. I mean, I grew up here. I spent many a wickedly cold morning walking 20 minutes to and from my high school (uphill both ways--seriously) because my Arizona-native mother declined to drive us. She never got a ride from her parents to school, so we were supposed to tough it out just like she did in that bitter 70-degree winter weather.

One would think that had imbued me with an impenetrable toughness that would stick to me like steel armor on moist skin in below-zero weather, regardless if I moved elsewhere for a spell. One would think wrong.

I've grown soft in the four years in college I spent enjoying the balmy Minneapolis weather. And a summer spent in San Diego and a fall in Washington, D.C. has made me a veritable pile of goo. I've been back in this frozen hinterland for a week and change now, and I'm suffering, I tell you. Did I mention the temperature when I left D.C. was 60 degrees, and I had been walking around all that week sans coat?

Instead of frolicking around our Nation's Capital wearing skirts and nothing heavier than a jean jacket, I'm now bundling up extensively for my stiff two block walk from parking lot to office and muttering expletives all the way.

I guess I chose the wrong week to climb back into that armor.

Driven to insanity

Though most readers of this fair blog have never seen me behind the wheel of a vehicle in motion,* I have actually been in possession of a valid driver's license for six and a half years now. I just really, really, REALLY hate driving. I loathe driving. I fear driving. If I had my way I would be able to disaperate.

The only place I've ever driven extensively and thus feel comfortable driving is my hometown in northern Minnesota. I don't have to go on highways to get from here to there, which means no merging. I know these streets fairly well, which means no getting lost. And I'm dealing with fellow northern Minnesotans, which means no Crazy Cities Drivers.

But it's been years since I've had to drive on a regular basis. We're talking summer after freshman year of college here, coincidentally the last time I was home for more than 10 consecutive days.

And now there's all this ice and snow to contend with, not to mention the sun glaring off said ice and snow, not to mention trying to get up our shear cliff of a driveway slicked with said ice and snow. All this must be navigated in a 1995 red Dodge Grand Caravan with wounds on its sliding doors from an unfortunate confrontation with our back porch.**

But since I decided to move home to a city made for neither walkers nor bus riders, I have no choice but to mount my modern-day pony of rusted metal and ride her into the sunset.

*I recently posed behind the wheel of a stationary postal truck at the U.S. Postal Museum
**It doesn't really count as bad driving because I was on my way to see a friend in a hospital

Limerick

There's a plastic bag in my shower
It's been there for several hours
It hangs upside-down
It gives me a frown
In this latrine that smells oh-so-sour

I've wasted many a thought
And all of them have come to naught
What use could be had
Between a plastic bag and a lad
Unless he likes suffocating a lot?

About the word "myriad"...

It's an adjective, not a noun.*

Example:
Hillary Clinton has myriad ways of misusing the word myriad.

NOT:
Hillary Clinton has a myriad of ways of misusing the word myriad.

*Before posting this I looked up the word on dictionary.com and discovered that it can be used as both a noun and an adjective. I have decided to continue this posting to prove how humble I am instead of proving how stupid everyone else was. It also proves the importance of fact checking and, to a degree, the fact that journalists are still relevant in a world filled to the brim with misinformation.

Lifestyles of the Broke and Lame-ous

Yesterday I was able to file my story remarkably early (3:00 Eastern: BAM). While I usually try to stay at work as long as possible to reduce the amount of time spent at home, I decided to leave in the twilight of 5:30 since I am staying in another angel's abode for a few days. This angel lives just over the Maryland border in a neighborhood filled to the brim with upscale shopping.

I decided to fill my newfound hour of solitude browsing through the posh offerings after a peek at my bank account showed I was many hundreds of dollars wealthier than I thought. I started at Saks 5th Avenue, which repeated viewing of Shopgirl should have shown me was a store meant for those many castes above me. I made a beeline for the "sale" display in the shoe section with hopes of replacing the boots that died on me. But even at 25 percent off, the lowest-priced were more than $300. That's so very many sandwiches I couldn't justify the expense.

Discouraged and trying to avoid having to tell nosy salespeople my paltry price limit, I fled to Neiman Marcus. I thought since I know a guy with the last name of Neiman and one with the first of Marcus, and neither is very fancy, the store would follow suit. Apparently retail doesn't follow my logic.

The crow in me was immediately attracted to three racks full of shiny sparkly party dresses, all marked 30 percent off. Alas, ten minutes' worth of browsing failed to yield a frock under a hundo. My sigh of distress must have alerted a snooty saleslady, who gave me snooty elevator eyes before snootily asking if she could help me. I bumbled a response saying I was doing quite fine on my own, thank you, and she turned on her snooty heel and went back to her perch to watch me.

I farted in her general direction.

Then I left, deciding to instead splurge my excess of cash on grocery store sushi and strawberries. And I feasted. So. There.

Setting the bar low

I've never really been one for making realistic resolutions. There's the perennial favorite-- "I will not burn the roof of my mouth"-- that I usually break during a cup of hot cocoa a few days after the new year. As a child I often resolved that that was the year I was to become affianced, nevermind the fact that I was more than a decade away from the age of consent, or to overcome my fear of the movie The Witches.*

So this year I'm going to make resolutions that require minimal effort so that at this time next year I can triumphantly trumpet that 2008 was a year of wild success.

• I will not vomit. I've already gone half a decade sans upchuck so this one's no sweat.
• I will say no less than 300 words daily. If I'm ever short on my daily quota I will simply recite the Bill of Rights aloud until a quarter of the way through the Sixth Amendment.
• In fact, I will, at all times, be either talking or not talking. I could talk or not talk forever.
  
• I will increase my Spanish vocabulary beyond the phrases "salida de emergencia", "salida de mi casa, hombre sucio" and "platos frijos" by at least two more phrases. I'm hoping to learn how to say "Stop that dilly-dallying, old chap!" and "I'll be persnickety-friggered."
• I will increase in age by exactly one year by this time next year. This resolution might seem moot but in order to keep it I shall have to avoid mortal peril, which is no small feat when I live as dangerously as I do.
• I will subsist on nothing but food and beverage.

Now I have no choice to keep these resolutions since I've chosen to make them public. Please feel free to comment with your resolutions so you can also enjoy public ridicule should you break them.

*Ha! As if this could ever happen in a million years