Carp and Soul

It is likely that you're sitting while reading this.
I imagine you sitting nearly horizontally in your Lay-z-boy or perhaps Indian-style on your plush love seat. Worst case, you might be atop your Executive lounge chair in your office; your 4-walled surroundings decorated by your calendar, pictures of loved ones, a few thriving plants, perhaps your collection of high-heeled mini-horses or some other accoutrements. Regardless of where you are right now, it's rather likely that you are blissfully unaware of an unappreciated window, providing natural light, somewhere within 50 yards of you.

I am writing to you from my "cube". And I don't mean "cube" in the Rubix sense of the word, nor the Dilbert sense, as my "cube" consists of a total of two walls. Two. Total.

And other than the Friend of Bill Gates variety, it would take a full day of hiking to reach the nearest window.

True, I didn't get an 89.2% in geometry or anything, but I recall enough to know that 2 sides which come together to form an "L", with a shelf attached perpendicularly at their midsection, does not constitute a "cube" of any kind. It's not even a triangle. In fact it's a monangle.

Inquiries regarding the promised addition of a third wall to my workspace have been (*gasp*) ignored and I am thereby left to conduct my business while sitting just inside the front door, my back to the world, and all coworkers or passersby havening full access to whatever happens to be taking place on my screen. The addition of the rear-view mirror perched atop my monitor allows just a fraction of a second less than the time required to close my prohibited Yahoo mail window before my boss can walk through the door and bust me.

Except on the days she wears her squeaky shoes.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; Thank god for Payless.

Ever since my iPod battery decided to go the way of the dodo last week, I've had only the constant audible churning of the printer to remind me that my ears are working. Directly behind me, the printer that serves at least 20 tree-killing paper-happy FREAKS is constantly constantly constantly, churning churning churning. Each piece of paper it spits out is accompanied by a squeal reminiscent of a little yellow baby bird unknowingly being snapped up, caught, and clenched in the jaws of a saber-toothed crocodile.

Snap. Catch. Clench. GROWL (*burp*). Repeat.

On the rare occasion that the printer is not actively in use, it shuts down with an exasperated moan, only to be jarred back to life with a screeching wretched twisting howl moments later due to an angry document seeker, who curses at the printer while violently replenishing its paper supply. Often, when I am shutting off the lights and locking up for the night, the bird is still being audibly digested by the croc.

Since no assault of the senses would be complete without fluorescent lighting, complete lack of privacy, constant ground trembling, auditory torture AND toxic fumes, today someone in my communal work area decided to have leftover seafood for lunch. I therefore had the pleasure of being surrounded by the putrid scent of rotting, maggot-filled, fish for several hours.
I grew up within wafting distance of Sheepshead Bay. Trust me, if I smell fish, there's a problem.

All day long, every time someone has walked in or by the door, they are forced to look directly at me (thanks again to my geographically undesirable workspace) while tossing aback their heads and scrunching their faces as if they're being clubbed with a 30lb rancid carp.

Never could I have imagined such a sense of longing to be atop my Formerly Trash couch, in my field and stream livingroom, above the lunatic nurse who beats her kid, in the merry old ghetto land of Rockville.