Marvin and the middle

Last night, I was watching The Last American Virgin, which was a stupid high school movie that was originally in theaters when I was in high school, and at the time I thought it was a great movie, which just goes to show you that people in high school are idiots. I also have a memory book from high school that asks you to write your future plans, and in it I say I don't want to get married until my future husband and I are making a combined income of at least $36,000 a year.

I was quite the financial wizard. Suze Moron.

Anyway. I was enjoying said movie for its terribleness and for its scenes from Los Angeles when Marvin walked in with a carrot. He is good about eating his vegetables, which, you know, that makes one of us.

For some reason I glanced over at him a minute later, and he was holding the carrot like corn on the cob, and eating it that way, too.

"What are you doing?"

"I don't like the middle," said Marvin.

The middle. Do any of you, ANY OF YOU, taste the difference in the middle of the carrot? I need to know.

In other less disturbing news, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life and also my new job. It is upciting. I'll have to go around and meet people and have to listen to them make inside jokes with each other. "Oh, don't say hi to that one! Heh-heh! He'll make you work till midnight! Heh!"

I hate that. You always have to laugh weakly because you have no idea what people are talking about yet.

Then on day two I have someone saying, "She came back!" to look forward to.

Did I tell you I will be working in a cubicle for the first time since 1997? Not did I tell you that in 1997, I mean this is the first time I've worked in one since then. I have always had an office. I think I will wait till the second or third day to decorate it, but I enjoy decorating my work space. Everything just ends up looking pink no matter what theme I go for.

At my old job in LA, I had all Hello Kitty at my desk. A Hello Kitty water cooler, mouse pad, pens, Post-it note holder. Nothing screams "respect me" like a woman in her 40s having Hello Kitty everywhere.

It's kind of like adults who have stuffed animals in the back windows of their cars. Why do they do that?

I had a job in LA where the owner wouldn't allow any of the desks in the front room to have stuffed animals on them, and the six secretaries who worked up there were seriously angry. Okay, you're ADULTS. At WORK. I'm sorry you can't have Grover at your desk. Perhaps at break you can all stand around with your sippy cups and grouse together.

Have I just totally dated myself using Grover as an example?

Anyway, I had better go. I have to drop off yet another book to my old workplace, and I have to shred (and I have lost not one ounce, by the way. Not one. If one person writes in to tell me muscle weighs more than fat I will drive over to your house and follow you around all day with flared Jillian nostrils. ALL DAY.), and I have to fill out my W-2 or W-whatever for work. I always write in the wrong number of deductions and Marvin gets mad at me, so this time he is actually here in the house, avoiding the middle of the carrot, and he can tell me whether it's zero or one.

I'll write you tomorrow at the end of my first day. Or earlier, if they fire me by 10:00.