New Office Chairs and Waiting for a Carrot

A wave of familiar despondency washed over Phil as he resolved himself to the “mandatory attendance” line of the email reminding him of today’s apres-5 pm staff meeting. “Darn it” he said aloud, adding only half-jokingly to his cubicle neighbor, “Why don’t they make a video tape entitled “staff meeting” and circulate it among each staff member 12 times a year?” Half-jokingly might have been cutting it a little short; to call these corporate goat-herdings tedious and redundant would be an understatement. “If I stay here even five more years I swear I’ll be able to recite one verbatim” Phil thought to himself.

As the day, like any other, went by with enough of the same routine to make the forthcoming subject matter seem almost repulsive, Phil couldn’t help but brood about what lay ahead. At least an hour, likely more, of being sat obligatorily in cheap molded polypropylene stack chairs in a poorly ventilated room while being submerged in sales figures, projections, market trends, morale issues etc. etc. The fact that he had mastered the ability to feign attentiveness while football, fast women and faster cars crossed his mind was all he had going for him as five o’clock neared.

As he made his way down the hall with the rest of the keyboard peons, Phil mused to himself how much more open to these meetings he might be if there was something of a proverbial carrot on a string to look forward to. Who knows? A corporate retreat to a sun-drenched destination would be wonderful, but beyond unlikely. He would have been sufficiently satisfied with an arrangement along the lines of a $100 gift voucher to Hooters and tickets to a Chargers game for every man and woman who attends each one of these monotonous time-holes over the course of the year. As if that would ever ...

As the door to the glorified lunch room swung open, Phil was taken aback. Fully expecting to look upon a table lined with those aforementioned stacking chairs, Phil was stunned to see a row of executive office chairs awaiting him and the other peons. It seemed even the bosses were looking out for themselves, as each end of the table featured an executive conference chair that looked exceptionally comfortable. As the lot of them murmured their token “oohs” and “ahhs” mixed with a few “wow, look at these,” Phil took a seat. Within a moment of sinking into the ergonomic office chair before him, he had to admit the hour and some that lay ahead of him no longer seemed quite so burdensome.

Phil had never enjoyed any staff meeting like he did that one and he further found he’d never been so attentive. Not to say that football, women and cars didn’t cross his mind, but they did so with far less frequently than usual. On top of it all, the same contingency surplus that had reached into online shopping at Cymax Stores to bring them these chairs was the same that would see each cubicle (or pen depending on your perspective) with a new office posture chair on Monday morning. Phil was so awash in the moment he even had the gumption to suggest the topless bar / football game incentive idea but was rejected in short order.

No matter, he thought, maybe things are looking up after all.

Elvis Lives! (In the Suburbs)

On Saturday morning, I am woken up by Elvis and bagpipes. I lean over to see if my alarm clock is stuck between radio stations, soon realizing that I hadn’t set an alarm. It is Saturday. Saturday equals sleep for me.

Perplexed, I get out of bed and peek through my curtains. And there he is, in all his glory: Elvis – clad in a white bedazzled, studded shirt with the collar flipped up, and matching white bellbottom pants with a belt that you could see from space. Yes indeed, Elvis is alive and he is crooning, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog” at my window.

The bagpipes are about twenty feet away from Elvis (not far enough). I am having flashbacks of my childhood: my mother drilling our Scottish heritage into my head by means of endless recordings of her favorite pipers and my father trying to instill in me what “real” music should sound like by playing LPs of Elvis, playing along with his guitar. I watch the pipers, and in my head, I go through the motions of Scottish country dancing – ugh. I turn my focus back to Elvis, and I swear one of my legs starts to wiggle, but it may just be pre-caffeine jitters.

I have never thought to imagine the King of Rock ‘n Roll and a band of twelve pipers go head-to-head for the spotlight on a suburban street in May. Nor what they are here for in the first place. I just moved to the suburbs after living in the city my entire life. In the city, Elvis might make an appearance, but only in the form of an over-confident, slightly inebriated fan, after closing time at the karaoke bar. But pipers? Not so much. I’m at a loss, so I walk into my den, where my community calendar is pinned up on a corkboard on the back panel of my workstation hutch. I flip through the calendar as I rub the sleep out of my eyes.

The May Day Parade! Upon realizing this, I am perhaps a little over zealous, but I have never really lived in a community before – the only parades I’ve gone to are more like protests than anything else. Wrapping my duvet cover around my shoulders, and with slippers on my feet, I visit the coffee maker for my essential caffeine kick (which did help my leg stop swaying) and then head for the deck.

One of the beauties of living in suburbia is that I have a rooftop deck – not a tiny Juliette balcony that looks out to a concrete alley between city blocks that I can only fit on if I lean up against the wall. No, this deck is huge and amazing and now that I can fit more than a body on my deck, I have completely spoiled both this deck and myself with stunning, quality patio furniture. But what feels like the greatest thing about this deck today is that it has a perfect view of the entire parade.

The parade lasts for a good hour and a half. Elvis and the piping band are followed by heaps of different community groups – from kids’ sports teams and school bands to War Veterans and vintage cars to Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. When all that is left is a few lonesome streamers and candy wrappers, I get up from my porch swing, head inside to my couch to catch up on the sleep that Elvis interrupted, with a smile on my face and an old song in my head.

Some Early Mother's Day Thoughts

It’s an interesting way of categorizing the memories I have of my child, but children’s furniture can make you think of and remember so many things. When I see a crib, I recall the excitement of my husband and me putting it together. Making plans for our little one, dreaming (!) of all the good things to come and double checking the screws to make sure that they were tight enough.

A few years later, we were putting together a toddler bed late at night, trying to make it a surprise for the little monkey’s (said with great affection and a vague reference to his stellar climbing abilities) birthday. That and we figured that he couldn't jump on it when we were putting it together if he was sleeping.

Then he started school and outgrew his bed and we bought a 'Big Boy' bed. For anyone without children, this is a twin bed. After a couple of years, we realized we had bought the wrong bed and had to buy a bunk bed so he could have friends over. Actually, from the time my son was two until he was ten we would have been better off with a trampoline but we weren't that crazy.

When he turned sixteen, we were informed that bunk beds aren't cool. The only reason we fell for that one and bought the double bed was because he didn't fit the bunk beds properly by then. The funny thing is he is away at school now, and we had to buy him a single bed for the room he is renting. My husband and I just had to laugh at that. Isn't it strange how looking at beds can make you remember so much.

Happy Mother's Day from all of us at Cymax Stores.

The Tent Dresser

Each B.C. day weekend I return to the island and enjoy three days of camping with childhood friends I regrettably don’t see as often as I would like. A four hour drive from our hometown of Victoria takes us to our not-so-well-kept-any-longer secret spot at Hornby Island, a jewel of an island in the Georgia Strait with beautiful white sand crescent beaches and the best six-gill shark diving anywhere on the west coast. An abundance of beverage-soaked sun tanning, scuba diving, mountain biking and endless reminiscing take up the bulk of a few days that always pass far too quickly for my liking.

The whole I-haven’t-looked-at-my-watch-since-yesterday carelessness and don’t-care-if-my-feet-are-encrusted-in-sand slovenliness is truly a tonic for my soul. I love the whole haphazard existence of it. I walk by the wash huts and see guys in their shaving and think “why on earth?” as I run my filthy palm over my 45-hour shadow. I can happily eat chunky soup and hot dogs every night and don’t mind one bit waking up in a tent with an acrid stale campfire smell about me and all manner of items strewn about randomly. Granted I’m sure it would wear on me over an extended period of time but for those 3 days each year, I’m in heaven.

Speaking of tents, last year one of the guys’ girlfriends decided a little more order was needed in their nylon domicile. I don’t recollect whether they were purchased explicitly for the purpose, but they brought eight of those cheap plastic “click” stacker shelves and made what she coined “the tent dresser.” Years ago we would have scoffed at such logic and practicality in our disheveled bushman utopia, but we all admitted it was a fairly nifty idea. While my sweatshirts often served as my pillow come morning, Big O’s were neatly folded next to his sleeping bag.

Now, I’m loathe to disappoint those persons who are eagerly anticipating my announcements of cymax stores’ new tent dresser, but alas, there’s no such thing.

However, for those of you who are not constantly inclined to revert back to your wonderfully disorganized youth and do in fact keep your garments impeccably arranged, a new dresser or chest of drawers from moredressers.com may be very much to your liking. Myself, I’ve rather grudgingly come to accept the need to organize my dresser chest; socks n ginch on top, shirts and the like in 2 and 3 and pants on the bottom. However, that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten a simpler time when each one contained a mish-mash of each as I frantically rifled through in search of the right Metallica t-shirt to wear to school. The spray-on jeans and converse hi-tops were much easier to find.

I’m not much for anything pricey, and moredressers.com also offers a fair selection of cheap dressers for like-minded individuals. If it’s nothing more than a box for your threads, that’s likely the way to go.

Now if they had one that was somehow imbued with the sweet aromas of campfire, seawater and a few-too-many the night before, the nostalgic sway of influence would surely be to much for me to resist.

The Second Generation of Kitchen Therapy

I remember trying so hard to sit still and calm down in school when I knew that weekend we were having company. Both my parents have a lot of siblings who, much to my never ending joy, produced multiple children per family. As a result, I am one of dozens of cousins within a ten year span. Needless to say, I’ve had built in best friends my entire life. When one of those glorious weekends would roll around and I knew we’d be having guests, it was the happiest I could ever be. For once in my lazy childhood I’d pick up the vacuum hose and haphazardly scoot my toys into one corner of my room in preparation. My mother would be looking haggard, to be quite honest, from the never ending cooking and cleaning, and my dad would be licking his chops over a new bottle or two of scotch to share.

Those weekends would come and go so quickly. There would be harrowing tales of love unrequited or denied and, without a doubt, a squabble or two over whose turn it was in the bathroom. People camped out on sofas and floors on a makeshift bed, yet no one ever complained. And everyone would informally gather around the table in the kitchen. Sometimes in packs, sometimes in pairs - all in search of a snack and some answers. Both were always found.

Saying goodbye on the sidewalk as family after family pulled away filled our entire house with quiet. Dinner that night was leftovers – but no one ever really ate much. By Monday the feeling was completely gone and would only return once the photos were developed; sometimes that didn’t happen for weeks.

Over the years we’ve done a satisfactory job of staying in touch, but the weekends of noise and laughter have never returned like they once were. The kids who once spent hours trying on each other’s clothes have all grown up and undertaken grown up jobs; their own families now taking precedence over aunts, uncles and cousins.

But now, I get to play host. It’s on a much smaller scale – just two of my cousins, but it will be the first time I’ve ever had overnight guests over to my apartment. The food is all prepared and fresh towels are folded nicely in the cupboard, but my home is missing something.

Everyone can agree that the house revolves around the kitchen. It’s where a kitchen chair can magically transform into a therapeutic leather sofa and the never ending grazing manages to whet your appetite even more. There being just two in our home generally means we eat in front of the TV. This scenario isn’t really conducive to company, so a proper dining table must be purchased from Cymax.

It might be a bit touchy-feely of me, but I already anticipate the exchange of news and wine over a comfortable, stylish dining table that will, with any luck, house a new generation of memories. Perhaps next time there will be children of our own . . . or better yet, an extra bottle of wine.

Shoes, Bibliophilia and a Place for Everything

Yes, I’m a woman. But I have never understood the attraction of owning so many pairs of shoes that they become a storage problem in need of a storage solution. Until I saw the movie In Her Shoes, when Rose Feller explains to her sister Maggie why she buys so many pairs, but hardly wears any of them. “When I feel bad I like to treat myself. Clothes never look any good…food just makes me fatter…shoes always fit.”

Okay, that makes sense to me. It’s the way I feel about books. Buying a new book, buying a used book, borrowing a book or re-reading a book I already own, is my personal quick fix for feeling better. When I feel bad, I too, like to treat myself. If I feel like I need a vacation, browsing the Travel section of a bookstore, preferably coffee table books about Italy, the Louvre or the castles of Germany, can be an inexpensive way to visit a European country. When I want to indulge in decadent desserts with absolutely no risk to my waistline, cookbooks are a safe option. But my all time favorite thing to do, especially in the summertime when I can read in the park, is to take a trip to the public library, pick out ten mystery novels and spend the remainder of the weekend and the following three weeks immersed in volumes of murdered corpses and those who solve the conundrums of their deaths. For a person who is not particularly fond of violence, this is my one exception—after all, it is fiction. When life gets just a little too much to deal with, my best defense is a selection from J. D. Robb’s In Death series or one of the Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly. If the world has really thrown me a curve ball, that’s when I reach for the hard core stuff, like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and read until I am ready to deal with the issue at hand.

I went through grade school being called a bookworm and spent my high school days answering to the nickname “Dictionary.” On days when work is so busy and hectic, when break time rolls around, sometimes all I want to do is read—eating is immaterial; if I don’t read, I reach critical mass faster than it takes a Lamborghini to go from 0 to 60 mph (3.59 seconds) and it’s not a pretty sight. (I mean me reaching critical mass.) I don’t even need to actually read the book; sometimes just flipping through the pages, or if it’s illustrated, just looking at the pictures, is enough to put a fresh spin on a bad day.

Do I sound weird? Well, they actually have a word for people like me. A ‘bibliophile’ is a person who admires, reads and collects books while ‘bibliophilia’ is the love of books, although the term is controversial, some arguing that it’s incorrect usage, others claiming that it is a relatively new expression. I think ‘bibliophilia’ is the perfect word to describe the addiction I have had all my life—well, at least since I learned how to read.

Aside from the view—I can see the ocean from my living room window—first time visitors to my apartment almost always comment on the number of books I own. In my living room, I have a library wall that houses my TV and a medium sized media collection, but on either side of this center section are two gloriously wide and spacious compartments designed to hold books. On the opposite wall of my living room, and matching the wall unit, is a freestanding bookcase, narrower in stature but no less impressive in its capacity to hold the L to Z portion of my personal library. (Yes, the books are arranged in alphabetical order.) Then there is a hand-me-down set of bookshelves, no less loved or treasured, that house my special collection. These are the books that are separated from the rest of the pack because I read them over and over again. They are a mixture of inspirational, non-fiction, fiction and children’s books. They tell stories that heal all that is wrong with the world; they feature heroes and heroines that get wounded, get knocked down, get up and who, at the end of the tale, conquer or at least have learned something new about themselves. These are the stories I have culled over the years that speak to my heart and resonate in my soul. These are the stories that in some way tell my story—and so I read them again and again, just to make sure that I am still okay.

Having them all around me, in plain view is an important part of bibliophilia. They sit on their bookshelves, in their appointed places, at the ready. They remind me, that in a world that seems chaotic and where senseless things randomly happen, sometimes there are definitive answers—there are stories worth telling and reading over and over.

Progressively Less Perplexing

During my late teens, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the guys (and likely we all know the type) who buy a very ordinary, often used car and then proceed to spend a large portion of their dishwasher or pump jockey earnings on window tinting, pinstriping, windshield decals (make sure everyone knows that’s a Mazda!), mirror dice (bizarre still) etc. etc. The big stereos I could dig–yet I would look at my dilapidated turd-brown 78 civic with a massive dent in the side but with a drum set tucked into the back and a female in the front and think “they just don’t get it.”

Now for those waiting for the token anatomy reference, it’s not forthcoming. I never bought into the inferiority complex theory, but I couldn’t figure out the logic in spending one’s hard-earned money on frivolous expenditures. To each his or her own, no debate, but back then it just seemed absurd to me to purchase non-necessities.

However, since then maturity and the prolonged influence of the missus have given me more insight into the value of decoration and stylistic heightening. It’s still not my thing, as attested by as recently as the late ‘90s my TV standing on milk crates, but I’ve come to have a greater understanding of it.

While on the subject of furniture and housing, my take on headboards back then is a good example. I purchased my first double bed from friends of my parents and it was simply a frame, mattress and box spring. All I needed for 50$. If I remember correctly, my mother suggested I take a similarly wood-finished headboard in the same size that had been collecting dust in their basement. The offer, however thoughtful, was refused in short order; why add weight and bulk to the moves that were occurring painfully frequently every six months or so in those days?

Some time later an individual told me that she felt more secure sleeping under a headboard, and that it added a sense of permanence to the bedroom. Mostly in one ear and out the other, but it got me to thinking. Maybe there was some measure of function to furnishing pieces I had, to that point, considered wholly unnecessary.

Accordingly, for those who have only recently had the same semi-revelation, I happily recommend stopping by moreheadboards.com, a most convenient on-line resource for augmenting your bed’s aesthetic and rejuvenative value. From twin headboards to full headboards to the always popular queen headboards and king headboards, you’re sure to find what best suits your needs. Further, if you’re not as décor clueless as I was (sort of still am) you can match your interior or tastes with a wood, metal, upholstered or wrought iron headboard, or any one of many different types available on the site. Should function be part of the equation, moreheadboards.com similarly offers an impressive selection of bookcase headboards and those that feature headboard reading lamps. Finally, if you’re still driving a dilapidated late ‘70s vehicle, there are more than a few discount headboards available there as well.

If, however, you are so fortunate as to have that aforementioned vehicle frequently include a drum set and a female, don’t let anyone suggest your shortcomings. Those who get it – get it.