Making up for the flimsy posts

When I gave my six week notice to the Agency I had no idea the repercussions that would follow. At first it was wonderful, random people in the company would walk up to me and start to gush how proud they were of me:

"I just want to say,congratulations!! That is wonderful!"

"I don't think I have ever met anyone who is going to Oxford!!"

I relished the attention. It was like my "I told you so" moment; see, I really am smart! I swear I wasn't lying during the interview when I quoted the Harvard Business Review. I really do read shit like that in my spare time--especially when the subject deals with wide scale manipulation of people. It was like the vindication the dorky over-weight girl back in high school feels when she comes back in September after fat camp with a new wardrobe and the cool kids begin to befriend her. The validation feels great but also somewhat hollow at the same time.

And besides the daily congratulatory metaphorical pat on the back, my life stayed pretty much the same. I did my job, went to meetings where I doodled in the margins hearts and stars and I continued to work my standard fifty hour weeks. However, as I am learning, there is an additional flip side to giving a company six weeks to find your replacement as opposed to the customary two weeks notice. The problem with giving so much notice, however, is that you begin to lose your resolve to leave the company gracefully and ladylike by the end of week two. Hence, I write this blog post in the middle of the day.


I don't know if any of you have ever quit a job but usually, from the moment you formally quit you have mentally checked out. When I quit my old job last year, my two weeks were filled developing a blog crush on Jason Mulgrew, IMing sordid details from nights of partying, negotiating my salary with my current job, and taking extra long lunches. It's like parole, a two week supervised paid vacation. Check in with your boss, sit at your desk, but do whatever you want as long as you aren't breaking the law. Or reading BDSM erotica in my case.

However, as the cache of the accecptance wanes and it becomes more and more clear that I will not be here past the middle of July, I find that I am being taken off of the more interesting projects of my job. I mean, I do see a point. Why have someone involved in a major project and then when it goes to the client, "Oh, the girl who worked on this is no longer here. But, it looks great doesn't it?!"

So, my days have become increasingly similar. Eat my breakfast while checking email, going to interesting meetings have been replaced with reading various celeb gossip blogs, I'll work on a few billing discrepancies, then read more celeb gossip blogs, follow up with a vendor on the phone, take my lunch break, email my friends, and make myself a cup of Chai tea by mid afternoon. And we cannot forget the lip-syncing contest I host in my cubicle to bad chick rock. Quoting Brittany, "It's me against the music."

No really, I lip-sync to really bad chick rock like Avril all day in my cubicle. Throw in my theatrical streak, and you have a very bad drag impersonation.

And, I am actually lucky that my work is not that strenous right now because in the ever fucked up world that is my life, the stem of my new neurosis: I think I have discovered roaches in my apartment.

Now those of you who have been to my apt and stayed with me, you are probabley not all that suprised to hear that I've finally succumbed to the inevitable. With a floor divided into clean clothes section and messy clothes section, a closet stuffed with numerous boxes of shit that never got hung or cleaned as well as filled with the requisite throw backs to my more athletic days, with racquets and cleats in addition to a roomate who leaves dirty dishes on the stove and a bathroom that hasn't been cleaned in about six weeks-- this shouldn't be too much of a suprise to any of you. However, I have never had fucking roaches before and I am fucking surprised as shit!

I've lived in NYC for the last two years and before I "officially" moved back, I've had plenty of sublets here. I am accustomed to city living. I know to never keep food out, to take out the trash nightly, never to keep dishes over night in the sink. I know this and I do this, and it has always worked for me. Except now when I have only six weeks left on my lease from my final apartment in the city for, hopefully, a very long time.

I think I am going to vomit.

A few days ago, I saw roach #1 on my wall in my bedroom. I chalked finding the little critter to the string of humid days we've been having in NYC. I mean, every apartment gets a roach at one point or another. I wasn't too concerned. I killed it and went along my merry way. Albeit, a tad freaked out, but I dealt with it (chalk one up to Shannon acting like a grown up). However, when I saw roach #2 this morning, when I was getting my clothes out of the closet, I freaked the fuck out. Especially since #2 came from the dark caverns of my overstuffed closet.

I'm afraid to go back to my apartment.

I mean, I'm so neurotic that I've even contemplated burning shit so that I do not accidentally bring a roach or its eggs with me when I move to the UWS in August. Plus, we can't forget how there will always be a part of me that actually enjoys living like a refugee, having all of my possessions fit into two suitcases. When the going gets tough, or if roaches are found, pack up in fifteen minutes and move the fuck back home. Or to another roach free space. Whatever is the least mentally taxing.

But seriously, this is fucking disgusting. I am a Jewish girl from the North Shore of Long Island, and this is not a way I live. The last time I lived among roaches is when I was three years old and we were living in Bay Terrace and a roach crawled into my little brother's crib. My dad packed the family up and we moved in with grandma until my parents found more sanitary housing.

If you didn't notice, over reacting runs in the family.

So, because I am such a germ-a-phobe, especially after my meningitis scare last year, I am spending Friday night cleaning and scrubbing with chlorine bleach my entire apartment. Roach motels will be set up, Raid will be sprayed, and I will be sleeping elsewhere because I am launching a chemical attack on my apartment. And as a pre-emptive measure, I'm moving out half of the shit and delousing it in my parent's garage.

I am feeling itchy just thinking about it. Oh yea, I've started to itch myself thinking that roaches have somehow implanted eggs into my skin as I sleep. I haven't slept well in weeks, and yet another reason for me to wake up in the middle of the night. What the fuck?!

In other news, important lessons learned:

1. I am powerless over alcohol and look soo much better not hungover.
Last night I polished off a bottle of champers. I wasn't supposed to, but it tasted so good and I liked the way it made me feel. This morning I woke up, my skin amiss, exhausted from such a crappy sleep and bloated.

I am not hot today.

I really need to be more serious about this lack of drinking, like seriously. I need to learn the word M-O-D-E-R-A-T-I-O-N. Moderation. Say it, use it in a sentence, make it part of my life.

2. How I spend my days at work now:

Besides developing an addiction to celeb gossip, I am trying to plan out my book treatment in order to maximize my six weeks of writing. So I spend my days at work, staring at the computer screen, thinking about some of the most painful moments of my life for the past three years. But, they are pretty fucking funny so hopefully finding an agent shouldn't be too difficult.

And the plans for tonight, off to another strip club with the strip class. My pole routine is mother fuckingly hot, if I may say. And no, I am sooo not drinking. I dance better when I am sober anyway.

I cant stand looking at myself in the mirror the morning after drinking.