Ditzy the Clown

I think I'm getting dumber. And this blog is just becoming a list of reasons I shouldn't be allowed to... well... do much of anything.

To recap:

1. I like popsicles.
2. I do not know how to manage my under-garments.  Example 1. Example 2.

And then yesterday happened... elevating the dumberness to a whole new level.


My favorite coworker in the universe (I think you know him) is on a trip that I kind of jinxed the universe into believing he should be on and I shouldn't. Works out well for me and terrible for him. So he calls me from his torture chamber (all-day conference room sessions) for some assistance.

This is not me. I am not this happy. But I do wear
a headset when I talk on the phone. 

I answer the questions asked of me to an audience I can only imagine is staring at the conference room speakerphone like it's actually going to DO something other than project my voice.  WC says, "Well, I think that's all we need now. We'll give you a call if we need anything else." I take off my Time/Life operator headset and go about the rest of my work.

About an hour later I get an email from WC: Can we give you a call again? 

I pick up my headset to get prepared for the phone to ring and realize I never hung up the phone. And, well, neither did they... but I think conference etiquette is that the person NOT trapped in a room of torture should hang up the call, right?

I email him back. Um. So I guess I never hung up the call. Should I just start talking or is that too weird? 

And I listen and wait for the email to get picked up by the email fairies and teleported across the country. And I hear him go: Heh.... Ummm... Melissa? 

Me: "Yeah?... I haven't been listening, I swear. I took my headset off and wandered away..."

And everyone in the room roars with laughter. And I answer the questions, but I feel ridiculous. And I try to sound like I know what is going on, but I don't.

And I think about just wearing a red nose and giant shoes to the office the next day and realize that I might as well have stepped out of a clown car already. I refuse to wear long pants and socks to the office in the summer because it's 90 degrees outside. But it's 50 degrees inside. At some point during my shivering I devised a perfect plan! I shoved my feet and legs up to my knees into the arms of a sweatshirt I leave at the office and sat comfortably with shirt-pants on my legs the rest of the afternoon. It really felt genius.

Now, if there'd been a sudden need to urgently leave my cubicle and run away, that would have led to tragedy.

And if I'd really thought about how ridiculous it would look should anyone actually have come over to my desk I might have thought twice. But it's possible I've completely given up on all appearances of professionalism. It's possible I have simply lost it.

It's possible I just invented shirt-pants. They're horribly impractical unless you're a desk jockey who never gets up to do anything. They will retail for $29.95 and are sold exclusively at Wal-Mart in the "office supplies" section. (I started at 49.95, but Wal-Mart talked me down.)