This morning I discovered that I hold my breath when a really cold wind whips up. I was walking to work in the Subarctic Wind Tunnel of Frosty Doom (also known as the sidewalk leading from the parking garage to my office) this morning when I noticed that I felt completely out of breath. At first I thought it was because I was walking quickly (something I don’t usually do, ‘cause I’m lazy), but then I realized I just wasn’t breathing.
Whenever a cold blast of air hits me, apparently my lungs seize up and refuse to inhale. Like breathing in windy cold air will make me any colder than I already am, breathing in regular cold air. My lungs are idiots. Good lord.
Total hatred of winter continues: In my job I receive a lot of packages that contain manuscripts from authors. The men and women who have been writing books for years and years usually just band the pages together with a couple rubber bands and toss them into a box. Because they understand one crucial thing: paper isn’t fragile. (Or maybe they’re just jaded and don’t give a hell anymore. Either way it’s fine with me.) But the young, excitable newbies who just wrote their first masterpiece on the sex lives of garden slugs or whatever don’t know this and send their manuscripts in boxes cushioned with bubble wrap, newspaper, and one of two kinds of packing peanuts (either the Styrofoam kind or the biodegradable kind). Or a combination of all of these. Normally when I get a package full of this crap I just smile and shake my head. But in the “I hate winter” mood that I’m currently in, and what with static cling being all the rage today, I want to send out a memo to every author I’m ever going to work with:
Dear Sir or Madam,
Believe it or not, paper will not break. Sure, it can rip, but not while it’s inside a box, banded together with hundreds of other pages just like it. So you don’t need to wrap your manuscripts like they’re made out of porcelain. It’s just paper. I swear to god it will not be harmed in any way while on its journey to me. So stop it! ARGH!!! Hulk SMASH!
Sincerely,
Mark
Why am I being such a baby, you ask? Check this out: There are Styrofoam packing peanuts all over my office right now. And by “all over” I mean they’re literally all over. On the floor, under my desk, clinging to the side of my desk, clinging to my chair, clinging to the manuscript they were supposedly protecting (and apparently still want to protect), hanging out in the hallway, etc. In fact, they’re everywhere but where I tried to dump them initially, which is into the trashcan.
No matter what I try, the packing peanuts continue to literally fly up and out of the trashcan like they're part of a zero-gravity space shuttle experiment. They cling to my hand, and so I try to kinda whip them off, like how you’d shake water off your hands, but as soon as they make contact with the plastic trashcan they fly back at me like a yo-yo. It’s like a vaudeville comedy routine, except that there’s no one around to enjoy it. And I sure as hell ain’t laughing. Believe it or not I finally said, “Get in the fuckin’ trash can!” As soon as I start yelling at inanimate objects, I know my workday is over. Or at least it should be. Because it means I am not having a good day.
Earlier, I was chasing them around my office like a nincompoop, trying to collect them all. But they’re acting like that gingerbread man from the children’s story--and ooo I hated that stupid gingerbread man, and I was glad when the wolf ate him (was it a wolf?). Aw, screw you little peanuts. You’re not even edible.
To add insult to injury, there were also some of the biodegradable peanuts mixed in, too, and so I’ve also got packing peanut dust all over the floor, on my pants, and on my shirt, because when I broke down the box all the dust that was hiding in the flaps sprayed out. I’m sneezing like mousemilk, only with less mucus involved.
The cleaning lady’s really gonna hate me tonight.
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