it's a hard knock life

I love pedicures! This time of year I just can't get enough of them. I believe that everyone should indulge themselves and pamper their feet from time to time. For me, it’s not about getting my toenails painted a pretty color. It’s about soaking my feet in a tub of warm water with jets, the exfoliating foot scrub and the foot and leg massage. And the best part…sitting in the huge massage chair and feeling so relaxed that I could fall asleep. After an hour at the salon my feet (and the rest of my body) feel rejuvenated. Last summer I would get a pedicure at least once every two weeks. A coworker and I would take a long lunch and go to the salon. This summer, so far, I’m doing better. Monday I had my first pedicure of the summer and it’s already the end of May!

I would also like to point out the fact that there were two men at the salon getting a pedicure while I was there. I have never been able to convince a guy to go get a pedicure. What is this strange fear that men have of going to the salon for a pedicure? Everyone should try it at least once. But beware…you may become addicted.

I have apparently done something to offend one or more members of the janitorial staff at work. I cannot figure out what I did as I have actually never met any of them before. But they seem to have it out for me.

My office is cold. I mean, freezing cold. I have two space heaters and one is on at all times during the work day. The less effective one is a big, ugly radiant heater and it stands on the floor near my feet. I don’t use this one very often and haven’t turned it on in weeks. On Tuesday morning I walked into my office and smelled something. I couldn’t quite figure out what I smelled but it was almost as if something was burning. I looked around for several minutes before I noticed the radiant heater lying on floor. Not only was it knocked over but it had stuff piled on top of it. And if that weren’t bad enough…the heater was on! I gasped and took a dramatic dive toward the floor to clear everything off the heater. I would have brushed this off as an accident had the heater merely been knocked over. But the fact that the heater was turned on and things were sitting on top of it leads me to believe that foul play was involved. The building could have burned down and the fire would have been traced back to my office. I could have been framed!

The next day when I walked into my office my plant was sickly looking. It is a very special plant that I took from my uncle’s funeral in January. It has been big and green and healthy and never looked sick a day in its life. I take good care to give it plenty of water and sunshine. After the heater incident I’m convinced that the cleaning crew is now murdering my plant. I’m working on nursing it back to health right now.

I don’t know what to do about this. If I leave them some kind of note I’m afraid it’ll give them more motivation to mess with my stuff. I wish I had a hidden camera. Although, I’m not sure I want to know what happens after hours. One morning when I walked in to work there were hand prints all over the glass desktop. Hand prints AND prints of other body parts. Ewww!

I watched the series finale of Will & Grace last week and heard a quote from the show that I absolutely loved. In reference to Will, someone said, “He’s the worst kind…he’s high maintenance but thinks he’s low maintenance.”

For the past several years I have been having an ongoing argument with a friend of mine. Not a serious argument but one of those arguments where you're kind of serious but you’re still just joking around because it doesn’t matter and it’s all in fun. Anyway, I think he’s high maintenance and he tells me he thinks I am as well (which I’m not). When I heard that line from the show I laughed and thought of him...apparently he thought of me as well. We just can’t come to an agreement on this issue.

So what really constitutes being high maintenance or low maintenance? What qualities and characteristics are maintenance issues and which ones are just personality traits? Those are tough (and sort of silly) questions and I don’t have all the answers. But I stand firm in my belief that this friend is high maintenance…and I’m not!

Have you ever had one of those embarrassing moments that you wish you could take back? Ever walked into a room with your pants unzipped or your skirt tucked into your pantyhose? It’s a times like this that it would be nice if life had a rewind button and you could just go back and fix it.

Yesterday afternoon I went to lunch with a few of my coworkers. As we were sitting at our booth talking, I noticed a group of patrons get up to leave. One of the ladies in the group was wearing a dress that zipped all the way up the back. The problem: her dress was unzipped…all the way unzipped. The whole restaurant saw her. I was embarrassed for her…but still slightly amused.

My junior year of college I went out to dinner with a group of friends. We had decided to try something new and headed down to a Thai restaurant that none of us had ever been to. We were sitting at a large table in the middle of the restaurant. Behind me, a middle-aged woman walked past our table toward the front of the restaurant. As she was walking her slip fell to the ground. I turned to look at her. I was completely mortified that something like this could even happen. She just shrugged, stepped out of her slip, picked it up and walked away. I was trying to conceal my laughter but it was impossible. I made a mental note to check the elastic on all my slips when I got home that evening.

Moments like these seem to be inevitable. I only hope that when they happen to me they are not very memorable. However, most of mine seem to be very dramatic and are not quickly forgotten.

Over her lunch hour, an employee at one of the neighboring businesses changed into shorts and running shoes and went for a nice, relaxing run. At least that’s what it was supposed to be. It rained in OKC last night and there was still some water on the roads today. As she was running, she slipped in a puddle on the road and took a hard fall. When she stood up and brushed the dirt off herself she examined her arm. The bone was trying to poke through the skin and the pain was excruciating. She could hardly stand let alone finish her run so she sat down on the nearest curb doubled over in pain.

My coworker drove right past this woman on the road but then decided to go back and help her. She had been sitting on the side of the road for awhile but nobody had stopped to see if she was okay until now. Her arm was broken and she needed to go to the hospital. My coworker used her lunch hour to help a woman she had never met before.

Once when I lived in Portland I had car problems and ended up stranded on the side of the road. I was driving down I-205 with my brother and my friend Tabitha. The car started making a weird noise and when smoke started coming out of the tires I decided to stop. The tires were ruined and the rims were damaged a bit. Traffic on the interstate backed up as drivers slowed down to look at us. We caused a traffic jam but nobody stopped to help. As we started walking toward the exit a minivan pulled off to the side. There was a middle-aged couple up front and several children in the back. Clearly, there was not enough room for three stranded motorists. But they offered us a ride anyway and made room in their vehicle for people they had never met.

Sometimes I am very impressed by the kindness of others.

I bought my car a few years ago. This was the first big purchase I made after graduating from college. I remember feeling sick as I was signing the papers and I actually had to excuse myself to run to the bathroom. Money stresses me out and committing to making car payments for five years was a big deal to me.

These days my biggest car worries are about the repairs. I am smart and independent and am usually able to handle things. But when it comes to cars I lack all knowledge, skill and ambition. A few weeks ago my brakes started to make an awful grinding noise and, after asking around, I came to the conclusion that I needed new brake pads. I called several places to get estimates and was quoted a price per axle. I was unsure about the number of axles I had but I still knew this was going to cost a lot more money than I wanted to pay. So I decided to do it myself. A friend was kind enough to help me out with this venture and he tried his best to put my car problem into layman's terms for me. After talking to him I felt like I knew enough to go buy the brake pads from the auto parts store all by myself.

I walked in and said things to the salesperson like, “I need front disc brake pads.” and “Do you turn rotors here?” I thought I had tricked him into believing I was going to work on my car all by myself. But then he started to ask me questions like, “Is your car a 1.8 or 2.0?” I was stumped. So we went out to my car to check it out. We were having a great car conversation and I was so proud of my newfound car knowledge. Then he asked me to pop the hood. Sure, no problem. I opened the driver side door and started looking around for the button that does that. I couldn’t find it and I blame the car manufacturer for not marking it more clearly. After searching the inside of my car high and low, the guy came over to me and said, “You really don’t know anything about cars, do you?” He then reached inside and found the button to pop the hood without even having to look for it. I’m pretty sure that he and his coworkers laughed at me after I left.

I’m happy to report that my car now has new brake pads and I helped with their installation. My help was more along the lines of keeping my friend company and handing over a screwdriver or wrench every now and then. But I helped nonetheless.

I love seeing people fall! Of course, I always make sure the person is okay before I start laughing at them. I’m always intrigued by how people choose handle it; whether they laugh it off or try to play it cool. I learned a long time ago that you can’t really recover from something like that. You end up looking more like a dork if you try to play it cool so you may as well just laugh at yourself…everybody else probably is.

This past weekend I took a bad fall. I volunteered to work at the Tom & Jerry’s tent at the OKC Arts Festival. I was signed up for a shift on Friday evening along with a friend of mine. I met him at his house after work and changed into jeans and flip flops before heading out. As we were driving downtown it started to rain. This was not just ordinary rain…it was like the sky opened up and tried to wash away the state of Oklahoma. We parked the car at a meter downtown and sat for a few minutes hoping the rain would ease up. No such luck. It was almost time for our shift to start so we decided to make a run for it. As we started running down the sidewalk a gentleman stopped to ask us for change. We had none as we had put the last of our change in the parking meter. We kept running. Then it happened. We ran past an old building with marble on the ground in front where the sidewalk would normally be.

Just to recap…I was wearing flip flops with absolutely no traction and was about to run on top of marble in the rain. Not a good combination! I slipped and fell flat on my butt. I was sitting on the soaking wet ground with jeans on! It took a minute for my friend to stop laughing enough to help me up. He grabbed my arm and began to pull me up. But, seeing as I had no traction on my feet, I couldn’t stand up. He kept pulling and I just kept sliding on the ground closer toward him. I couldn’t stand up and I didn’t know what to do. So I wrapped my arms around his legs and sat on his shoes. I was obviously not thinking clearly. We were on a busy street corner in downtown OKC and I was on the ground with my arms wrapped around his legs! I sat there trying to decide whether to laugh or cry. In between bursts of laughter I could hear my friend saying, “Krista, please get up there are people watching us!”

Somehow I managed to get up and we continued on to the arts festival. I walked down the street with a wet behind and he walked behind me…laughing!