Meccanized

Someone reminded me today that my birthday is around the corner — I’m roaring towards my late-20’s at an alarming speed.  And I think I’ve officially hit an age where each birthday is preceded by weeks worth of sentences starting with “I’ve been thinking a lot about…”

There was a time when I willingly risked broken toes to KY Jelly wrestling (explaining that to my parents was my first foray into public relations).  When I crawled through steam tunnels.  When the drummer from Guster saved me from being accosted by a homeless person outside of the Warfield.  When I ate an entire Vermonster from Ben and Jerry’s by myself.

I was a wild woman.  And though I’ve had my fair share of idiotic adventures in San Francisco, I’ve mellowed in my old age.

I’m pretty happy with life at the moment.  I have a job I love (and the start of a career I am really excited about), fantastic, incredibly supportive friends and family and the energy and time to work on hobbies that really make me happy (writing, kicking ass at bar trivia…and uh…something more substantive and socially acceptable than that last one).

Especially with regards to writing, I see this being a big part of my future — that’s something that has become abundantly clear to me over the past few months.  I’m not sure I have the wherewithal to make a career out of it (which is really just my way of saying I am insecure about my ability to be creative, ambitious and…well…crazy enough to go for it), but  I can’t imagine being happy if I couldn’t write in some creative, opinionated and maybe vaguely snarky capacity.  That’s part of the reason I love this blog.

Not really sure what the point of this post is.  I guess this is what happens when you combine two days of fever with three episodes of Dexter and way too much orange Jello.

I guess I should Meccanize navel-gazing..

For the past month or so, I have been uncharacteristically un-peevable, hence the stalling of Meccanized.  Fear not, dear readers, the happy spell has passed. Today, I experienced extreme rudeness that really ground my gears.

I was sitting in my usual seat on the bus home (by the front door) when a middle-aged woman with a cane approached the bus.  Before she even got on the first step (and before anyone sitting had the chance to get up), the woman rudely and angrily looked right at me and yelled “Jesus, you people are so selfish.  Is someone going to get up?”  Now, I am usually the first person to give up my seat (and I very much relish the moral superiority that goes along with that), but today I froze.  My reasons:

- There were 10 other people sitting nearby that could have gotten up.

- I had several bags with me, so standing and holding them all would have been challenging.  The other 10 people nearby had less in hand.

- This woman’s approach was really rude (and that rudeness was for some reason immediately directed at me), and I was partly stunned and partly unwilling to validate that behavior.

Was it worth the Karma points to let her win, stand up and deal with holding my heavy bags and not being able to reach the stability bar (ironically, being the bigger person)?  Would I go to hell if I stayed the course, kept my butt in the seat and waited for someone else to crack under the pressure?

I’m curious to know what you would have done.  I decided that no one has the right to talk to me that way and that someone else could give up their seat.  For about 10 seconds.  Where no one else got up.  At which point my moral strength (or pressure weakness) took over and I yielded my seat to the woman.   She didn’t say thank you and, actually, rolled her eyes at me as I stood there with all my bags.  I fumed silently and mentally composed this blog post to Meccanize her.

Maybe this is what I get for needing to sit near the front of the bus.

You know what really grinds my gears?  People who shamelessly self promote.

But I can handle grinding my own gears (and, by definition, I am kind of already Meccanized), so here goes:

I wrote a post for my company’s blog describing a cool PR experience I recently had with a client.   Check it out!

http://tinyurl.com/cotgje

Just a quick post before I go to sleep.

“Hearts of Palm.”  It was an item on my grocery list yesterday, important enough that it had its own line on my note pad.

I go to Mollie Stone’s.  I get my hummus without incident.  My yogurt with no problem.  My quarter pound of pesto parmesan ham sans difficulty.  All I have left to buy is one damn can of hearts of palm …

… which, of course, is on the highest possible shelf in the canned vegetable area.  I stare at it for a second, wondering if there is some way I can safely knock one down without hurting myself.  After vetoing that idea, I notice a 40-something man a little farther down the same aisle.  Like any civilian in need, I explain my predicament and ask him for assistance.

His response (before even getting me the can)?

“Wouldn’t this be a great story to tell our kids someday?  That mom and dad met because mom couldn’t reach a can of vegetables?”

An uncomfortable few seconds ensued.   I stood drinking in the proverbial big cup of awkward, a frozen half-smile on my face (a relic from the happier, normal times a few minutes before).  He made no attempt to pluck the can in question from the shelf for me.  I finally couldn’t stand it anymore, mumbled “oh, I forgot I need this,” grabbed the first can within my reach from the shelf and skittered away with my basket.

I just wanted some hearts of palm.  Instead, I got an unsatisfied craving and a can of creamed corn (yuck) that now sits on my counter silently reminding me of the discomfort of the afternoon.

I’m not even sure what grinds my gears about this.  Asking for help and instead getting an unwelcome pick-up attempt?  Asking for help and not actually getting help?  Having to go through my weekend without my hearts of palm fix?

All of it.  Meccanized.

From philosophical, back to petty and trivial:

Strangers (and friends … cough *Shelly* cough) who criticize my sandwich as I am having it made, you are Meccanized.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about timing (which I have Meccanized over and over again pretty much for my whole life).

This past week in particular, there has been a lot of timing snafus — I’ve felt like Little Bobby Buttons (i.e. Benjamin Button, for those of you who aren’t a certain industry analyst who misnamed the movie) fairly frequently. Some good (narrowly avoiding getting rained on because I opted to sprint across the crosswalk rather than wait for the next light, thereby making into my office building before it started pouring) some less than good (more just-missed busses than I care to admit, hearing things in the present that I wish I had heard years ago).

It’s sad to think how many things don’t happen or don’t work out because of a few ticks around a clockface. Then again, it makes the things that do work out that much more special, because you appreciate how close you could have come to never experiencing them at all.

You know what really grinds my gears?  When you slip/trip and fall on the wet pavement outside of a restaurant (and drop your groceries) and the diners inside press their sausage fingers and fat faces against the window to try to get a better look as you flounder helpless and wet to collect your food before it rolls into the street.

I was hurrying back from the store to avoid getting soaked when I had a foot malfunction on the wet pavement and ended up on my butt, on the sidewalk, in an inch of water, with my paper grocery bag (never have I hated SF’s no plastic bag law as I did in that moment) tipped over and flooding next to me.

Fortunately, a very nice homeless man who had asked me for change minutes before came over and helped me up and helped me pick up my spilled items (he was unable to salvage my pride, which by then had leaked out of my body and into the gutter on California street).  He refused to take anything but a thank you, and I would like to De-Meccanize him — for helping me and for restoring my faith in humanity.

However, wet pavement and the collection of people at the Curbside Cafe who looked on as I hit a weekend low (and the ground), you are Meccanized.

I need a hug.  And some dry pants.

Pet owners who dress up their animals grind my gears. This, however, makes me happy beyond belief (and I feel fits with the spirit of Meccanized.com quite well):

http://petswhowanttokillthemselves.com/

Enjoy!

Some guy half-sat on me on the bus just now! Do people not see me?!

Maybe I should Meccanize myself for being too small (or, you know, cloaked in invisibility).

Update: I think said gentleman saw that I was typing this because he just got huffy and stood up. Passive aggressive mission accomplished!

I hate making them.  I hate dealing with the fallout of making them.  And I really hate the insecurity that follows making them.

And today, I got to experience all 3.  Yuck.

Rookie mistakes, you are Meccanized.

(I have cheerier things to Meccanize that will be covered in due time, but I just needed to vent.)