I'm really not the world's best speller. I'm not. I mean, I don't do that thing where I spell definitely "definately" or anything, and I use the right form of "there" and all that, but when it comes to always knowing when to drop an "e" off a word or whatever (I always think, "Truely or truly? Judgmental or judgemental?"), or if "i" before "e" applies here? Not that great.
Yes. I have been a proofreader for 15 years now.
What I'm good at is knowing how to fix punctuation and grammar and knowing how to LOOK UP WORDS that I have any doubt about. And this is why, when they gave me a proofreading test yesterday, with NO DICTIONARY--which is so phony because in real life you'd have your honking dictionary or m-w.com on you at least--I hemmed and hawed over whether embarrassed had two "R"s in it.
I know. And I also know you should go with your first answer, and my first answer was to leave the two "R"s in there and guess what. GUESS WHAT?
I took an "R" out.
And dad, embarrassed has two "R"s. Thanks for the bad-speller gene.
However, it was page after page of testing. Compare these documents side-by-side. Straight-read this document. Whip up a souffle. So I think in general I did pretty well. Ironic word to screw up with, though.
In the morning, before I got there and erroneously removed an "R," (oh, and erroneously I know how to spell. I just typed the PEE out that word with no issue) I was putting on my interview outfit, which I had selected the day before down to the necklace I was gonna wear.
As soon as I put it on I realized I was wearing an Edsel suit. Seriously. I don't know how I can take something out of the dryer, set it on the dining room table for two weeks, then hang it in the closet and it gets so covered in fur.
And yes it IS Edsel fur, as opposed to the 20 other pets here. His furs are long and wispy, like his brain matter, and he is sheddy.
My point is, I roll roll rolled that pick-fur-up thing and the fur would not come up. It was like a nightmare. Then I got out packing tape and tried that. Still. Most of the fur was staying put. I was considering a whole other outfit altogether when the doorbell rang.
#$$&*$.
It was Peg, my next-door neighbor. The one who doesn't know when not to have a party. "Hiiiii!" she said, all cheerful.
Could I have been less in the mood for a drop-in at that moment? "I'm getting ready for an interview," I said, exasperated.
"Oh, I'll just pop in for a minute!" she enthused. My mother has people popping in and out of her house all day. If this happened to me I'd commit hari-kari in a week.
Anyway, she brought me a Valentine.
She also brought a dark chocolate bar filled with raspberry.
Me. At the 1:55 mark.
Anyway, she tried to help me get all the teensy balls of fur off my pants and finally said, "Oh, no one will see," which I do not believe to be the case. And ALL my black pants are like this, so it's not like I could slip on another pair.
Why do we have to have all these pets? Oh. It's just me here. Crap.
Anyway, I drove the 595403030 miles to the interview, and the buildings are beautiful, and there were geese there and you know how I like the geetzes. There was a boy goose and a girl one, and ONCE AGAIN I took a PHOTO of them with my PHONE and now it isn't showing up on my computer even though I plugged my phone in. Does anyone know why that's happening?
There. I just had to email the damn thing to myself. My point is, I thought the girl goose looked pregnant, because I am a goose gynecologist. So if I get this job I can once again get attached to goose babies at work.
It's just a contract position, you know. Not permanent. Because apparently no jobs are permanent anymore.
So I guess we'll have to see. Oh! And I got there about 20 minutes early and ran to the impressive bathroom in the lobby, where they had hand lotion and tampons and so on, which was kind of exciting. Remember my job in Winston-Salem, where they had the huge thing of mouthwash in the bathroom?
Anyway, I washed my hands and as soon as I dried them I realized my hands smelled like grapefruit. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Why in the Sam Holy Hill is grapefruit the trendy thing? So then I had to sit there and wait to die, which surely would not have gotten me the job. Clearly I lived through it, so if indeed the soap WAS grapefruit, it was just fake grapefruit smell or not enough to slay me. But Ima have to do BYOS to work.
I kept feeling like my hands were itching.
I guess that is all I have to tell you. I will let you know if they, you know, call me or anything. In the meantime, I have to pay bills today because I got my severance check, and also I have to clean my car, which has 39549549 pounds of Edsel fur to match my pants. In other words, I have a day of fun and frolic planned.
Maybe I'll head to the library and check out What to Expect When You're Expecting Baby Geeses while I'm out...