...and she's OFF...!!!!!!

Hallelujah...

"SHE" is gone. One more day working with "HER" and then this ridiculous-enough-to-be-a-parody office situation is finally over. "SHE" has quit.

But it's better than that: she's leaving to move to MISSOURI (of all places) to "show the world the real HER." Honestly, I think Christopher Guest could do a GREAT job with this entire scenario. Parker Posey would play me. She'd roll her eyes a lot. SHE is leaving with NO job lined up, NO place to live, all of her belongings in a car, and she's LEAVING her son behind (paying some family friend to put him up for a year) while she galavants (because there's no better word to describe what she's doing than lunatic GALAVANTING) around middle America with an e-Squeeze that - admittedly, blatantly, brazenly - does NOT love her, but has managed to sweet-talk her into running his start-up business that will NOT pay her (the business is a classified listing publication meant to bring business to small businesses along the central corridor - she is, and I quote, "PASSIONATE" about this historic part of middle America. Because, really, there's no place more beautiful the Carthage. No place). SO - with a bit of money that her father gave her, she'd quit her job, unloaded her "disappointing" son off onto someone that will love him for a year in her place, and is taking this chance (the "chance of a lifetime....she just HAS to do this. Just HAS to") to end up homeless and unemployed, taking orders from a man that has no romantic interest in her. But don't misunderstand her, she's NOT moving for e-Squeeze. That would be "wrong."

Okey-dokey.

SO - that means my office Nemesis will finally be gone. And yep, I have an office Nemesis (a phrase I usually associate with comic book characters - Good Guy just wants to save the world, have a burger, kiss the girl. The comic book NEMESIS wants to destroy the world - hamburgers, cute girls and all...BUT, in comic book world the Good Guy and NEMESIS don't have to share a tiny 6x12 office for eight hours a day - they occassionally run into each other and fight, then leave each other alone most of the time. I'm not so lucky).

There was a screaming match once, between the two of us. It ended with me screaming (with much waving-of-arms...so professional...) "I WILL NOT CENSOR MYSELF FOR YOU!!!!!" in response to her belly-aching over the fact that I "treat her unkindly."

No, unkind I reserve for spiders in my bathtub, for disappointing episodes of C.S.I., for guys in mall kiosks trying to convince me to buy a cell phone that I neither want nor need. Unkind is reserved for people that get belligerent on the phone when they call the office demanding money and pull the old "did YOU get paid this week, young lady???" card. When it comes to HER...well I don't think there's even a word for the kind of frustration I routinely endure.

Imagine spending hours inside of a tiny office with someone that lectures the entire office about the food they eat.
Imagine spending hours inside a tiny office with someone that has a moral problem with complaining and finds any excuse to chastise someone that complains. "It is what it is, life's not fair, and we wouldn't really want it to be." That's one she's said before.
Imagine spending all day in an office with someone that bakes brownies, then PROHIBITS anyone from eating them until noon, because "it's too early for chocolate!" at 10am...I kid not.
Imagine someone that is unable to troubleshoot, or make judgement calls, and is still unable to solve a computer malfuntion after nearly TWO YEARS on the job...she wants to get permission from IT before changing her network password.

At any rate - she's finally gone. She's done. She's Missouri-bound. And hey, if it doesn't work out, her father's offered her a couch to sleep on and a full-time nursemaid position caring for her mother if she's interested.

In the meantime, she has 3 days to "teach her son to become a man."

Yes, that's what she just said (in the middle of some tirade about how we've never learned anything or achieved anything or gained anything from wars..."we just don't learn!")




ALSO - a word from Seattle's local wine GURU Richard Kinssies on my favorite thing in the world: