So 6 months later, I've decided I have a ridiculous enough life to make this blog thing happen. The thing is, I always knew my life was ridiculous because I'm a pretty ridiculous person, but I never realized just how ridiculous until I found myself working a 9-5 desk job at a real estate agency...with the most square of squares you will ever meet. Up until this occurred last October, I for the most part had always surrounded myself with people who are of similar or equal weirdness levels. However, now, I find myself surrounded by people at least twice my age, who I don't think have even ever heard of the concept of "having a sense of humor". Nevermind sarcasm. I'm literally from a different planet. Just to emphasize my point of how little I fit in, I am inclined to park my car all the way behind the building away from everyone else when I come in every morning just so the agents don't stop and wonder who could possibly be the proud owner of the red Pontiac covered in bumper stickers and duct tape. So basically, me being thrown into the middle of an office environment and attempting to interact with the "normal people" is, as I decided to name this blog, like trying to mix oil with water. Yeah it doesn't really work. But if you do it anyways you get really weird swirly colors and designs...aka my life.
Tale #1: 17 Lbs of Lasagna
In my 25 years of life I never saw this day coming. Nor did I want it to come. But want it or not this horrifying day unfolded just a few short weeks after beginning my new career as RE/MAX front desk lady: my first office party.
My first thought upon waking up on this dreaded morning was "Hi boss. Yeah about coming in to work today...I'm not doing that." Or if that wasn't specific enough perhaps going with the classic "I woke up with explosive diarrhea" excuse. Cause let's face it, I can't think of a faster way to ruin an office party than spontaneously shitting your pants. But, despite my better judgment I pulled my fancypants out from underneath the remnants of last night's dinner, put them on my body, and managed to drive myself to the office without even driving myself off a cliff...which was also beginning to seem like a rational thought...and less embarrassing of a story than shitting my pants...
So, the time comes for me to set up the RE/MAX Best Choice Annual Halloween Party. My boss assigns me the simple task of going to pick up the party platters, which were conveniently located in walking distance next door and wouldn't even require anyone witnessing me driving my duct tape mobile. Excellent. I embark on my journey.
I arrive. The lasagna is ready. I pay the $109 for the lasagna. I thank the cashier for the lasagna. I go to pick up the $109 worth of lasagna. I nearly drop the lasagna. I know lasagna is dense and all, but at this point I'm 90% sure the cooks had run out of noodles and opted to use anvils as a substitute. This lasagna was heavy as fuck and all of a sudden the 50 foot trek back across the parking lot seemed a lot longer and I probably should have driven after all. Although, even driving I soon realize wouldn't have been too helpful once I got up the first set of steps to the first door. I stood outside that door, arms quivering from the weight of the 200lbs of lasagna for a good 45 seconds struggling to evaluate all possible options on how to get this door open without the $109 worth of lasagna ending up on the ground for I had this hunch that the agents wouldn't have been too keen on eating lunch off of the front steps. My panic amplifies with the passing of every second. Did I mention they were contained in the flimsiest of all aluminum foil pans...one wrong move and that lasagna was done and I would have to slink upstairs to explain to my boss how sorry I was that I ruined Halloween and that we had some animal crackers in the supply closet that we could perhaps feast on instead.
I don't know how it happened, but in my sheer panic of single-handedly ruining my first office party, somewhere deep within my soul I miraculously acquired this super-human strength...the same level of strength I imagine one would acquire in a life or death situation. Ya know how in movies when the good guys dangling off the side of a ledge with blood-thirsty wolves awaiting them at the bottom of their fall while the bad guy stands nearby laughing maniacally and then out of nowhere the good guy is suddenly able to pull themselves back up to safety and then kill the bad guy and ride off into the sunset? Same concept. Except instead of wolves, lasagna.
So, my superhuman strength kicks into full force and I was able to pull the entire door open with just my pinky, that I somehow managed to take away from holding the lasagna pans for .2 seconds in order to do so. Following that everything was a blur, for between that point and my kitchen table destination there is a full fledged royal curved flight of stairs, another door to open, and a long ass hallway to go down. But, in my "life or death determined to survive" state, I barreled through these obstacles, sprinted down the hall (because the kitchen is of course at the complete opposite end of the office), and my superhuman strength gave out literally at the exact moment I pretty much catapulted the lasagna trays onto the table. Somehow no one saw this, so I casually stroll back down the hall to inform my boss that I was back and the food is here.
The next thing that happened was even worse than the first--they invited me to come to the party and eat with them. Now full-blown panic has settled in. I have to go sit and socialize with these people for an unknown period of time. And given the fact that the phone hadn't rang in well over an hour and I probably shouldn't admit to the fact that I was mid-crossword puzzle and really wanted to stay and figure out the clues I was stuck on, I followed them down the hall to where my doom awaited me.
Before I continue I must inform you of this little tidbit of information: I am lactose intolerant. Now that that's been established, I get to the kitchen and see that people were already seated and eating and talking, so in fear that they might try to include me in conversation I said hello and then went directly to the lasagna. I figure if i just take a small piece and shovel it into my face I can just lie and say I have lots of work to do and go back to my desk without anyone taking too much offense. And since a little cheese is ok for me to have without any consequences I go to cut myself a slab.
First off, this is the cheesiest, gooiest lasagna I have ever encountered, so obviously, me being me, the slice I was in the process of putting onto my plate self-destructs mid-air and explodes back into the pan. Great, now I look like I don't even know how to feed myself and since there were people waiting behind me I frantically shovel the lasagna debris onto my plate and step aside for the next person to take their serving.
Now that the lasagna is safely on my plate and only a few pieces splattered on the counter, I go to dig in. I now realize, that in my lasagna serving frenzy, I have filled my entire fucking plate with approximately 17 lbs of lasagna. The paper plate is literally having trouble supporting this amount of food. Oh dear god. After I've verified that the paper plate is in fact strong enough to support my lasagna mountain I start to worry that the agents are gonna look over and notice my lasagna mountain and wonder "why the hell did the weird new girl take half the tray of lasagna?" And I'm not about to admit my mistake...even if I was about to it's too late as I've already started eating it...I can't just go back to the counter and shimmy some of it off my plate back into the pan. And after my boss spent so much money on this stuff I can't just eat some of it and throw the remaining 15 lbs away in front of her, that's just rude. So it's on. I have to eat 17 lbs of lasagna.
This actually turned out to be pretty convenient, because as it turns out, the real estate agents apparently wanted to engage in conversation with me just as little as I wanted to engage with them. Either that or they could sense how dedicated I was in my lasagna mountain conquest and figured it best not to interrupt my concentration. So for the next 15 minutes I shoveled and shoveled, until all of a sudden, my stomach remembered that it doesn't know how to digest cheese and decided to inform me of this by morphing the cheese it was digesting into daggers. Mind you I'm not even halfway through my plate here. So I stop eating for a few moments and figure I could jump into a conversation to give my stomach time to settle before I continued on. Unfortunately, the topic of conversation at this time was "which brand of dishwasher is best." My only opinion on this matter was "the kind that when you put dirty dishes into it and push the start button it makes them clean." And my only dishwasher related story involves a hilarious day my sister and I flooded the entire kitchen by using the wrong dish soap. Neither of these inputs seemed like they would be appreciated by this crowd, so I decided to casually smush my lasagna over enough to make room for a few scoops of salad hoping maybe some lettuce would distract my stomach from the cheese intrusion and soothe some of the daggers. No dice. So now my plate is again completely full and I am literally about to induce vomiting in the middle of the office Halloween party, which I'm pretty sure, would've been classified as even worse than shitting my pants.
At that point I admitted defeat. There I stood, in the far corner of the kitchen, awkwardly holding a heaping plate of food that I now have no intention of finishing while my stomach reenacts World War II. Time for conversation attempt #2. The topic has now migrated from dishwashers to what color wallpaper to put in the kitchen with the nice dishwasher. Fail. It was over. I made a few last desperate attempts to at least make some of the bottom of my plate visible, but to no avail. I waited until everyone burst out in a fit of laughter and knew this was my opportunity to make a run for it. I made my way for the trash can, as discreetly as possible threw my entire plate away, pretended like I had to go to the bathroom so I could escape, and then spent far too much time in the bathroom for the next 2 days.
Lasagna: 1 Rachel: 0
And that's why I shouldn't be allowed at office parties.
