When Did You Get Peppermint Foot Scrub?

Mike's Comment after my Shower

I like to have soft feet...I ignore them entirely too much, so I don't have them. On top of that, due to my extreme case of Plantar Fascitis, I spend almost all of my time with my foot taped up. Because my lovely and talented husband gets to tape my foot, it's not nearly that neat.

The down side of surgery and plantar fascitis is medical adhesive. It sticks. Forever. Long after you remove whatever it was meant to adhere to your body. In fact, the object of the adherence might JUST fall off. So apparently it just sticks to skin forever. In my current life, it means that I constantly have black and gummy lines on my feet from where the last round of tape was.

Why don't I just wash it off? Two reasons. First? The previous paragraph. Soap don't work. Acetone? Nope. Petroleum Jelly? Ok, takes forever. Second? Well, I shower in the morning, approximately 3 hours AFTER my husband vacates the house. While he's perfectly happy to wake me up to give me shots in the butt before he leaves, I don't have to shower first and I can turn over and go back to sleep.

Tonight, I did some heavy lifting, and it's a bit muggy around here. So, I decided to get a shower before bed. And I decided to clean my foot and make it soft before hubby attacks it with more tape. So, I dug into my quickly emptying tub of Peppermint Foot Scrub. And it felt so good when I did the left foot, I decided to do the right. Unfortunately, I'm a klutz. You knew that. So, I knocked off the tub of peppermint foot scrub onto the bottom of the tub. And milliseconds later, a glob of peppermint foot scrub arrived in my eye. I gotta say that it's ALWAYS hard to flush your eye with water...I mean water doesn't feel good to begin with, and strangely, your eye is designed to shut tight to help create tears and wash out the stuff you got in there. When it's peppermint AND gritty? Yeah, fun.

So, I come out and tell my husband what happened. He cocks his head and I think he's trying to figure out how I managed to get a big glob of peppermint foot scrub into my eye. Nope, he posed the question above.

No good comes of bathing. Or of marriage.

Dark and Stormy Ratholes Investigated Here

I have a vision problem. Whenever I see a problem, I want to fix it. Even when it's not my problem. I like untangling problems. And being right. I'm good at it. I do it professionally, which makes it much easier to live my personal life.

The upshot is that I'm better and faster at things than a lot of folks I work with. I spend my life in a few systems, they access them a few times a month. I've managed the world as a benevolent dictator because...um...well I can. Oh who are we kidding? I like the power trip!

Turns out, this management of the itty bitty details doesn't leave me much time to do the things I'm really good at. This world has been untangled, so it's time to move on to new things that are celestial clusters. So, my boss is trying to clear a lot of this stuff off my plate and give it to the people who really own the processes and the data.

However, there are dark and nasty ratholes that only I can go down. I notice problems. Sure, I could ignore a problem I see, but that's the wrong thing to do. No, I don't own them, but if I let someone else try to figure it out, it will get even more screwed up. Then people OVER my boss will say "Well, Debi should figure this out." Or worse? They'll try to get folks at corporate to do it. Honestly? I like that the folks at corporate love me. I'd prefer not to hand them a big honking mess...I know, vision problem.

Anyway, I'm gonna make me a sign. It's going to say:

Dark and Stormy Ratholes

Investigated Here

Cheerful Service

Reasonable Rates

Stop your laughing.

No Felonies Here

Place of work has recently been acquired. Actually, the company that acquired us a couple of years ago was acquired by a bigger company which is owned by a BIG HONKING company with more than 85,000 employees. Being acquired by such a large company, that is actually quite good at acquisitions, is new for me. Now that I think of it, I've been through five acquisitions now. Huh. But that's not what this is about.

The new company has processes. And a lot of them. I suppose that's important when you've got so many people. One of them is that new employees get a background check. For felonies. Since we're newly acquired employees, that means us.

I'm not sure how the Human Capital director referred to it, but it wasn't clear what would happen if you DO have a felony on your record. I mean, we're already working here. So, in the meeting of 100 of my closest co-workers, I asked. This is suprising, I know. I'm not typically so inquisitive or outspoken? I'm not sure that this question had ever been asked because I was then told, uncertainly, that it would be handled on a case-by-case basis. Ok.

A coworker told me a couple of weeks later that I've raised a lot of eyebrows. Lots of people are speculating about my criminal background. Which is just hysterical. It's not like you can't COME TO ME AND ASK. The only thing I've ever been CAUGHT for is speeding. And the last time that happened was early 1996. Parking tickets (all 2 or 3 of them) don't even count, because they're not moving violations. I'm not saying I haven't done other things. That ugly plant Dana and I stole in the 8th grade comes to mind. But I think we did the nursery a favor, really. And there are a number of photos which document the enormous amount of underage drinking I did at a certain fraternity in Atlanta. But none of those are felonies. And like I said...it's been a while.

Mostly, I asked because it came to our attention several months ago that not only was one of our coworkers a convicted felon, but he was working at our company on work release. Huh. He's gone now. But not because of a background check.

And really, Human Capital? I guess that's supposed to be friendlier than Human Resources, but it kinda makes me feel a little like property. Of course, I'm easy. Pay me enough and you can call me anything you want. Easy, but not cheap. Feel free to file away that useful piece of information.