Drinking Diet Coke makes me feel like a bitch, just the sound of the name Diet Coke all hard with edges, and the slender silver can, like I should pop the top with long painted fingernails and slump back in my chair with boredom. I’m not much of a soda drinker.
I’m not much of a soda drinker but when I do drink soda it’s because I’m in Guatemala, say, and they are selling tall glass bottles with real cane sugar, bottles chipped from being stacked in sticky crates, or because I am at the movies with a big bag of popcorn. Then a few weeks ago I spent the weekend at a friend’s house with a fridge full of Coke Zero and since then the craving just comes up.
The craving just comes up and mostly I push it back down but today I gave in. There’s no Coke Zero in the lobby shop so I picked the closest thing, this Diet Coke with the word Diet in special script for women, a soda a man would never buy. I paid the eighty cents with a five even though there were two crisp ones folded in my pocket from when I meant to take the bus to work this morning.
I meant to take the bus to work this morning but as I was coming down the stairs I couldn’t ignore the clear blue sky, and I couldn’t help feeling I’ve been making too many excuses. So I got on my bicycle and halfway the rain started falling, pok pok pok on my helmet, splashing my jeans with fat spots. My fingertips and ankles stung with the cold, and my whole right shin. I was red-faced and damp by the time I got here.
I got here and it’s been the sort of day where I’m not sure what I’m doing at my job besides accruing experience, and by experience I mean days spent sitting at this desk. Last night I was planning a trip to Rio, a trip that will last one single week, and it makes my stomach turn – to fly all that way and not get lost in Brazil, not take long bumpy bus rides and pick up Portuguese riddled with errors. Instead I am going down and checking it off, turning around before it’s touched me. All because of vacation days. This is not what I am supposed to be doing. But raise your hand if you feel like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. I am not supposed to be rationing vacation days and I am not supposed to be drinking Diet Coke. Drinking Diet Coke makes me feel like a bitch.
2 comments:
First! I mostly just wanted to be first to comment on your new (old) blog. But I also have a comment: It's hard to feel sorry for you as you plan your trip to Rio and lament about your job (when the news says OR unemployment is over 12%). And if all you're doing at your job is sitting at your desk then, instead of taking South America by storm, take the brownfields community by storm! You've now got the "experience" under your belt, go use that cred to put into action some really cool, innovative, tortaluga-only ideas. And if you don't have any such ideas yet, well then, maybe it *is* time to do something different - this might not be it.
wow, sometimes you write something and it apparently reads nothing like you meant it. and by you, i mean me.
i don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. not only do i feel lucky to have any job at all, but i think my particular job is great, and suits me well. i just happened to be having that sort of morning that i think most people have now and then, where i was feeling a little stalled out. i like to write when i feel that way.
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