flour power

Back in mid-December (the 16th, if ya wanna be specific about it) my boss decided that our office was participating in an area Adopt-a-Family program, wherein your organization gets the specs on an area family in need (ages, genders, clothing sizes, wants, needs, etc.) and they buy Christmas gifts for them. Well because this drive fell under “clerical odd jobs” and everything in that category invariably falls to me, I ended up organizing the thing. And I didn’t really mind, as it was a fun job and quite a switcheroo from the mind numbing crud I usually get saddled with. I was a bit perturbed that Cathy launched the whole thing so belatedly (Dec 16th? That’s pretty shabby) but overall, I was cool with it.

So the day arrived for the pick-up of the gifts and me and a coupla folks from the Development Dept (it feels hokey to call them “Development” , as they’ve dubbed their crew. I’m always compelled to call them “Marketing” which is what they truly are) wrapped everything. Gaye (head of "Development") insisted we get photographed next to the mountain o' gifts wielding our rolls of wrapping paper (but of course she spins it into a photo op...that's her whole niche in the agency) Now that I wasn't overly thrilled about...not a big fan of getting my photo snapped, but I sucked it up and thought-- whatev..one of the pics she's going to schlep around to her please-support-the-VNA community outreach fetes that *I* will never have to see so what do I give a damn?

Well today she emailed the photo agency-wide. BARF. I sorta have myself to blame, though my instigation was *completely* inadvertant. I received in the mail a thank-you letter from the Adopt-a-Family program that expressed appreciation and also gave some results ie: how many gifts amassed, how many area families helped, etc. And so I scanned said letter and emailed it to everyone with reiterant "Thank you to all who participated" (actually it was a skoach more eloquently put, but I did manage some semblance of brevity believe it or no) And I guess that reminded Gaye of the photos she had taken, because mere minutes later her email went out.

Okay, it's bad enough that I looked HORRID. I was annoyed at having my photo taken (that's a given) and so I'm doing this awful transparent straining-to-be-civil smile (I have always been crap at smiling on cue ) Secondly, I'd just wrapped about a hundred presents and my updo was half fallen down. The real piece de resistance though was that fluorescent overhead lighting+ an unnecessary flash made it starkly apparent that I hadn't paid much attention to blending when I did my make up that morning. I had some sort of blemish fest on my face at the time (broken out in "spots" as the Limeys so cutely put it) and what I'd done was slapped some concealer over it and in my ill -lit bathroom I couldn't see how NOT blended it was and/or my coffee deprived brain didn't perceive it and/or I just had to smack that snooze button an extra time or three and was consequently running late that morning and didn't give a flying feck. Probably that last one, if I know me. You know, if I am going somewhere *important* and I have imperfections to mask, there's a whole time intensive, multi-layer spackling job I do but for work I just DON'T try that hard, aesthetically speaking (as I've made abundantly clear in this blog) Plus, I had no advance notice that I was going to be photographed that day either.

So yeah, short story long--I'm in this pic looking utterly hagged out and I have a bizarre white patch on my lower cheek, jawbone region. It was really pale flesh tone, but reads white in the fluorescent lights + camera flash atmosphere. So one of my coworkers--obnoxious bitch that she is--quickly emails me: " Did you have something with flour on it for lunch? LOL" Bloody hell... I have a general aversion to "LOL" to begin with, and then you get some people who overuse it to a redonkulous degree. This Amy is one of those. But obviously my biggest qualm with her is that she just HAD to point that out to me. When you get a publicly distributed photo of someone, where something is quite evidently jacked up about that someone's FACE, the humane thing to do is act like you never saw the picture. Obviously. Why must I always be the arbiter of proper decorum? Geeeez! Ok, so I feel a smidge guilty calling her an "obnoxious bitch". That's a tad strong, but the "obnoxious " part of it is right on the money.

I emailed back to her " I hadn’t had lunch at that point. Although I was somewhat discolored and disheveled from doing a faceplant in that pile of coke (I needed a li’l “picker-upper” to help me dispatch with my elving more expeditiously, y’know…) Yep, you shoulda helped out…it was a big drug orgy….good times. " Of course I wasn't going to cop to fucking up at mon toilette!!

Her response? "LOL"

Oh, you're "laughing out loud" now girl, but you gon' be laughing out tha otha side o' your face iffin you don't shut the hell up soon...