The blog that was a long, long time coming

My boss has found an interesting way to insult me without doing it directly, which has proved interesting over the last couple of days. The first little jab had to do with a pair of red shoes that I wore to work. These red shoes are super cool and I wear them because I am a super cool person. They are slip on running shoes from the Running Room and, as mentioned, they are red. The day that I wore them at work there was snow on the ground so, while trapsing through the snow and slush I was wearing an old pair of hiking boots, some Calvin Klein cargo pants and a white shirt. When I got to work I kicked off said hiking boots and put on my trendy red shoes. I would say that my overall appearance was sporty/casual. I did not feel that this was inappropriate because I did have wallow through the snow and I didn’t feel like doing it in what little finery I have.
Now I will explain the way in which my boss was able to infuriate me in a roundabout way, without giving me a direct reason to give her an open-handed smack in the mouth. She comes into our (unfortunately) shared office and starts talking about the inappropriate comment that her boss had made to her. I will briefly interject here that, throughout the span of my eight hour day, I listen to her verbal diahrea for at least one hour. She then says something like, “And you know, that’s just an inappropriate and irrelevant comment for him to make to me. It would be like me saying to you ‘What was with those shoes you were wearing yesterday? Did you think they were appropriate? Don’t you think you should have been wearing socks?’.” I was so dumbfounded I could not speak. I gave a wan smile and turned back to my computer while fantasizing about running through the streets of downtown Vancouver with her head on a pike (which is an atypical fantasy for me, since I usually tend to lean to fantasies involving George Stroumboulopolous interviewing me on the Hour. And by “interviewing” I mean something much more risqué. And by “on the Hour” I mean “for an hour”). So that may seem a bit mundane, but then today she attacked my hair. I don’t mean attacked my hair like the time a crow came after me and chased me down 26th avenue cackling incessantly, cause that was really weird and more scary than one would think. No, this time she had interrupted me to tell me about the upcoming party she is attending in February that she wants to make a brilliant appearance at, and how she should wear her hair. Her hair, like mine, is highlighted blonde. Unlike mine it is also prolific with grey, and that is because she is an old cougar. At any rate, she said that she wants to have her hair done well before the party because she likes to have some of the dark roots showing: like mine. And then she actually asked me to pull back my hair to show her the extent of my roots. I am not making this up. What does one actually say to this? And then a few minutes later we were talking about bus drivers and she interjects that she has never had to run for bus, obviously inferring that because she is so attractive the bus drivers just automatically wait for her. I have had to run for buses. I have had buses pull away from me because I missed it by one nano-second, and the driver has flipped me the bird and tried to splash me by driving through an inordinately large puddle. Okay, maybe the last thing didn’t happen, but still. The final straw came when she gave me up to her boss about my filing habits, or lack thereof. The files for all our customers are kept in the filing cabinet next to my desk. A couple of months ago I noticed that both my boss and her boss would pull files from this cabinet, and instead of returning the files to their appropriate places, they would simply place them in a pile within the cabinet. I filed them away properly the first couple of times this happened, after which my boss indicated that I should probably just leave them out because she and her boss would be pulling out the same files over and over again, and when they were done with them she would file them away. So upon returning from a trip to the lavatory (where I tried to decide just how atrocious my hair actually is, and lamented over my current choice of footwear) I come back to find my boss all atwitter. She wants to tell me yet another “story” about her boss and what a jackass he is. She tells me to shut the door. So I get up, out of my seat to shut the door so she can waste yet another three minutes of my life that I will never get back. She proceeds to tell me that her boss came in, was agitated that he couldn’t find one of the customer files, whereupon my boss says to check in the pile of yet to be filed files and her boss bitches about the lack of filing. And my boss (who told me not to return the files and said that she would bring the filing up to speed) says that I’ve just been really busy, so that I haven’t had a chance to get to it yet. Clearly I was to blame. Oh. My. God.
And even when she was talking about how much weight she wants to lose and made a comment to the effect of “you know, when you’re sitting down and you have that little roll over the top of your jeans?” I could’ve said, “no, I do not know which roll you are referring to, because I am in really good physical shape, so I cannot collaborate with you in this particular instance... you ass hat”. But I didn't, because I have some modicum of what, decency? niceness? class?
So to sum up: my hair has roots and I am one mickey of Silent Sam away from looking like I should reside in a trailer park; I clearly do not know the boundaries of appropriate office dress (this from a woman whose hair is unwashed as often as it is clean and whose own wardrobe is as resplendent with as many chords, jeans and t-shirts as is mine, and who wore the same hoodie at least twice this week and is wearing running shoes today); my filing skills are suspect; and bus drivers think I am ugly. And the real kicker is that somehow, she is my boss and I cannot tell her -when her phone rings for the umpteenth time today and it is her other cougar friend calling from Mexico to tell her how much she hates her husband and how she threw a high heeled pump at him – hitting him in the head – and how is it that he incites her to such anger that she would actually throw a shoe at her and oh yeah, her son is sick too and should she take him to the hospital or just wait it out a little longer - to kindly shut her cake hole and that she is the most neurotic has-been that I have ever encountered in my life, which is infinitely more rich and healthy and full than hers.
I have resisted from dissecting my work life on my blog for the longest time, but today… today is apparently a special day. Maybe I am tired from working the extra day a week and have less patience. Possibly I am irritated that I allowed her to get under my skin more than normal today. And I suppose that, deep down, I should pity her because she is married to a man that she appears to despise and her children seem to get in the way of her binge drinking, and she likely looks at me and wishes she was 10 years younger and forty pounds lighter, but I can’t. She is a fuck nut. So I need to remember that I am okay too. I caused a man driving down Granville to scream “Hey, can I get your number?”. I was at a house party where an attractive (and sober) gentleman serenaded me with “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling”. A girl hit on me once. A Tim Horton’s employee gave me five timbits, when I had only asked for two. A Trees Coffee employee told me that it would be better if I stayed to have my coffee instead of taking it to go. A bike courier chatted me up in the elevator (why did I not get his number??). A guy smiled at me on Howe Street once and I almost walked into a bus. Yeah. That’s the ticket! You know what? Roots or no roots I think I’m going to go out and get myself a coffee. I may even sit down and read the paper and check out the wildlife. I just wish I was wearing my red shoes.