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Monday, November 01, 2004

Indomitable... kinda

I want to write about something meaningful and deep and all that, but my mind keeps returning to my plethora of interview-related faux pas from this morning. (What is the plural of faux pas? Faux pases? Faux pax? Faux pas de deux?) I may as well just bare all and hope that by allowing the entire internet to see what a dork I am, ultimately I will be able to stop thinking about it for a while. You know, sort of a delegation of responsibility.

Okay, team! Listen up! You, over there, spend the next few hours pondering what a tremendous misfit I am, and when you tire of it, pass the baton to the next person. But I need to move on to some other issues, like why it is that you can buy the Equate brand equivalents of many of my favorite beauty products for half what the name brands cost, and the ingredient lists appear to be identical, but it's possible that "other ingredients" is actually code for "goat urine."

Okay, so, my morning included (but was not limited to) the following:

1) Spending half an hour walking around my house in my bathrobe, clutching the outfit I intended to wear, strolling in and out of different patches of sunlight and artificial light, trying to determine whether my blouse was the same navy blue as the color in the pattern of my blazer. (Can you tell that one too many times I have left the house in an outfit that matched in my bathroom that was later revealed in full sunlight to clash horribly?)

2) Spending fifteen minutes applying cover-up to my eleventy billion pimples because at 33 years old stress will still cause me to break out like a horny teenage boy.

3) Pinching my eyelid in my eyelash curler so hard that my eyes watered and I had to muster every ounce of willpower to suck those tears back into my eyeballs because I had already applied my mascara, dammit.

4) Brilliantly getting the idea to generate Mapquest directions to my destination because the directions sent to me didn't take into account my starting point, and I was just so sure there was a shorter and faster way to get there. Well, there was. Too bad I missed the very first turn. Then I figured I could wing it, getting to Road A at a different point and then following the directions to turn on Road B to get to Road C. Road A comes to a T (which way?) and then as you're starting to wonder if you chose the right direction it forks (which way??) and then turns into Road X for a while (WTF????) and then I have a nervous breakdown and call the interviewer to confess that I am either almost there or very lost.

5) Realizing, as I screeched the car to a stop at my destination, that OH MY GOD I am wearing navy clothing, navy shoes (pretty, pretty navy shoes) and carrying a black purse. Why have the fashion gods not struck me dead right here and now? An oversight. What to do? Aha! Leave the purse in the car! Carry cell phone and keys. Better to be a loser juggling belongings when the time comes to shake hands, than to let it be known that I am the only adult woman in America who never learned to coordinate her bag with her shoes.

6) Fumbling through the same information I already imparted in the previous two interviews (albeit with different people) in this odyssey, realizing how lame it all sounds, trying to cheer myself with the silent reminder that anything starts to sound stupid if you say it often enough. (Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat, toy boat....)

7) Being not so much interviewed as made to sit through various descriptions of what the job might entail, what has happened before, what the expectation is for the future, and being offered Dunkin Donuts munchkins (I declined). Then being asked if I thought I could handle it. Do you suppose anyone, at that point, says, "No, I'm sure I can't. I'll just be going now!"? Seems unlikely. And yet, I didn't feel like I was able to offer any concrete evidence for my superiority over anyone else. Unless the munchkins were part of the testing, and declining them demonstrated strength of character rather than what it really was (enough stress and nerves that they might've made me puke).

8) Leaving with no indication of what might happen next, or when.

9) Getting lost again on a different route on the way home. What can I say? I'm talented.

The only uplifting thing I can tell you with certainty, after all of that, is that my hair looked really nice today. Should they be determining this position on smooth shiny hair, it's in the bag. Should they be deciding based on any other factors, well, did I mention how nice my hair looks? Yeah.

You know, sometimes things seem really bleak. And sometimes I come home and have a whole bunch of snack sized candy bars and then decide that's a poor excuse for lunch and then try to balance it out with a lot of coffee. After that? Things are still kinda bleak, but who the hell cares. Did you know that there are inside-out Reeses cups? If you don't picture your son puffing up like a blowfish and asphyxiating while you eat them, they're really quite good. Tra la la!